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AN 



INQUIRY 




THE PRINCIPLES AND POLICY 



GOVERNMENT 



THE UNITED STATES 



Comprising nine Sections, under the following- heads :— 



I. ARISTOCRACY. 

II. THE PRINCIPLES OF THE POLICY 
OP THE UNITED STATES, AST) OF THE 
ENGLISH POLICY. 

III. THE EVIL MORAL PRINCIPLES 
OF THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED 
STATES. 

IT. FUNDING. 
V. BANKING. 



TI. THE GOOD MORAL PRINCIPLES 
OF THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED 
STATES. 

VII. AUTHORITY. 

VIII. TEE MODE OF INFUSING ARIS- 
TOCRACY INTO THE POLKT OF THE 
UNITED STATES, 

IX. THE LEGAL FOLIC 1' OF THE 
UNITED STATES. 



BY JOHN TAYLOR, 

©F CAROLINE COUNTY, VIBGINI. 



FREDERICKSBURG : 

PUBLISHED BY GREEN AND CADT. 

1814." 










DISTRICT OF VIRGINIA, To wit : . 

BE IT REMEMBERED, That on the fifteenth day of November, in the 
thirty-eighth year of the Independence of the United States of America, 
.JOHN TAYLOR, of the said District, hath deposited in this Office, the 
Title of a Book, the right whereof he claims as Author, in the words fol- 
lowing, to wit:.... 

"An Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the 

" United States, comprising nine sections, under the following heads : 

" I. Aristocracy. II. The Principles of the Policy of the United States, 
" and of the English Policy. III. The Evil Moral Principles of the Govern- 
"ment of the United States. IV. Funding. V, Banking. VI. The Good 
" Moral Principles of the Government of the United States. VII. Autho- 
rity. VIII. The Mode of infusing Aristocracy into the Policy of theUni- 
«« ted States. IX. The Legal Policy of the United States. By JOHN TAY- 
" LOR, of Caroline county, Virginia." 

In conformity to the Act of the Congress of the United States, entituled 
« An Act for the encouragement of Learning, by securing the copies of 
Maps, Charts, and Books, to the Authors and Proprietors of such copies 
during the times therein mentioned ;" and also to an Act, entituled " An 
act supplementary to an Act, entituled, 'An Act for the encouragement of 
Learning, by securing the copies of Maps, Charts, and Books, to the Au- 
thors and Proprietors of such copies, during the times therein mentioned ;* 
and extending the benefits thereof to the arts of Designing, Engraving, and 
Etching historical and other prints." 

********* WILLIAM MARSHALL, 

* SEAL. J 

********* Clerk of the District of Virginia ,, 



TO THE 'PUBLICK. 

1 HIS book being written for your use, and subject to your 
judgement, the means, motives and habits of the author ought to 
be disclosed, lest its imperfections should be ascribed to his 
cause, instead of his bias or inability. 

Having arrived at manhood just before the commencement of 
the revolutionary war, the ardour of that controversy, a consider- 
able intercourse with many of the chiefs who managed it, a ser- 
vice of three years in the continental army, of twelve in legisla- 
tive bodies, and an experience of our policy both in poverty and 
affluence, inspired him with the opinions he has endeavoured to 
sustain. At the age of forty, his circumstances, which had been 
ruined by military expenses and the depreciation of paper money, 
having been repaired by the practice of the law, a desire of being 
more useful, induced him to devote the residue of his life in a 
private station, to the advancement of academical, agricultural, 
and political knowledge. These essays contain the result of his 
endeavours as to the last; and whatever may be their fate, he is 
not conscious of having written a single sentence from a bad 
motive. 

Upon the appearance of Mr. Adams's defence of the Ameri- 
can constitutions, and of the essays signed Publius, but entitled 
the Federalist, he imbibed an opinion, that both had paid too 
much respect to political skeletons, constructed with fragments 
torn from monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, called, in these 
essays, the numerical analysis ; and too little to the ethereal moral 
principles, alone able to bind governments to the interest of na- 
tions. Subsequent occurrences induced him to conclude, that a 
confidence in that analysis, inspired by these books, had deadened 
the public attention to the only means for preserving a fiee and 
moderate government. And the following essays (in which the 
reader will not find Mr. Adams's erudition, nor the elegant style 
©i Publius, because the author was not master of them"! are the 



vi j 

contemporaneous suggestions of these occurrences or of expe- 
rience, designed to portray human nature in a political state, and 
to explain the moral principles capable of foretelling its actions, 
and controlling its vices. 

Monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, appeared to the author 
to be inartificial, rude, and almost savage political fabricks ; and 
the idea of building a new one with the materials they could 
afford, seemed like that of erecting a palace with materials drawn 
from Indian cabins. He thought that these respectable commen- 
tators, in making the attempt, had allowed little or nothing new 
or pre-eminent to the policy of the United States ; had overlook- 
ed both the foundation and the beautiful entablature of its pillars : 
and had left mankind still enchanted within the magick circle of 
the numerical analysis. 

Believing that the true value and real superiority of our policy 
consisted in its good moral principles ; that these principles were 
the only worthy object of national affection, and the only just so- 
lution of the ill success of other governments and of the wonder- 
ful prosperity of our own ; that by transplanting it upon the 
British substratum, maxims and measures destructive to ours, 
however calculated for their political system, would be introdu- 
ced; that the dangerof this approximation was greatly augmented, 
by the respect which the English form of government attracts as 
the work of our gallant ancestors, the source of our affection for 
liberty, and the solitary rival of our own ; that the belief of such 
an affinity, would enable legislation to draw the confines of the two 
forms of government so near together, that a step or even a stum- 
ble might pass from one to the other ; and that a disclosure of 
the contrariety in their principles, might become a beacon against 
an exchange of good and lasting moral principles, for cobweb 
and fluctuating numerical balances ; the author of these essays 
concluded, that the next age ought not to be deluded, by the si- 
lence of its predecessor, into a belief that this affinity was gene- 
rally allowed. 

Although the elevation of the British form of government, 
produced by a few moral principles, violently and of course clum- 
sily thrust under it at different times, constituted the American 
observatory at the epoch of the revolution ; from whence, through 
the telescope, necessity, new principles were discovered, now- 
confirmed by the distinct experience of each state for periods, 



[ vn ] 

exceeding, when united, the duration of any one of the modifi- 
cations of the British government : yet the non-existence of the 
supposed affinity is at once disclosed by the few words " balance 
" of orders and judicial independence." The first, indigenously 
implying a sovereignty of orders of men, and the second a judicial 
dependence upon that sovereignty ; transplanted, balance is ap- 
plied to powers without sovereignty, and independence to confer 
a judicial power never thought of in England. 

By the British policy, the nation and the government is con- 4 
sidered as one, and the passive obedience denied to the king con- 
ceded to the government, whence it alters its form and its prin- 
ciples, without any other concurrence than that of its parts ; 
whereas, by ours, the nation and the government are considered as 
distinct, and a claim of passive obedience by the latter, would of 
course be equivalent to the same claim by a British king. 

Instead of an affinity, a deep rooted contrariety appeared to 
the author of these essays to exist, in the reliance of one policy 
upon political law and national opinion, and of the other upon 
official power, for the control of official power. It seemed to him 
as unphilosophical to suppose that official power could be mixed 
with human nature without changing its qualities, as that alcohol 
would not change the qualities of water ; and that to moderate 
official power by official power, was something like weakening; 
alcohol with alcohol. On the other hand, he could not discern 
how publick opinion could perform the office expected of it, un- 
less it was well instructed in those good moral principles, capable 
of distinguishing between laws or measures consonant to the 
nature of our policy, and those flowing from avarice, party zeal, 
ambition, or the errour of its supposed affinity to the British. 

The human mind, buoyed up to the zenith of hope upon the 
billows of the French revolution, sunk with its wreck into the. 
gloom of despair ; and philosophers seem inclined to abandon a 
successful experiment, because they have been obliged to dis- 
gorge extravagant theories. It is necessary for the happiness 
and safety of the people of the United States, to revive political 
discussion, both to enable them to defeat the frauds of factions. 
and lest it be inferred from the despotism of France, that the go 
vernment of their rival is the last refuge from oppression. The 
great danger of artisans and agriculturists lies in the legal depre- 
dations of the various parties actuated by exclusive 



L vm 3 

natural to the British policy, such as a court interest, a military 
interest, a stock interest, and various other separate interests,, 
whose business it is to get what they can from the rest of the 
nation. Like the armies of Bonaparte, all such parties subsist 
upon contributions, and repay them with arrogance and contempt. 
By such parties, or by enlisting under some statesman or general, 
agriculture and arts have been universally degraded from political 
influences and subjected to a tutelage formed to plunder them. 

A few texts are selected from Mr. Adams's defence of the 
constitutions of the United States, because its candour furnished 
the best materials for a distinct exhibition of certain subjects ; 
and the inviolable obligation of freely examining his doctrines, 
was not inconsistent with a high opinion of his virtue and talents. 

The author has only to add, that he has nothing to plead in ex- 
cuse of the imperfections of these essays, but his incapacity, and 
that a common sentinel may awaken an army. He has devoted 
to them the occasional spare time of a busy life, during twenty 
years. Their revision and publication was deferred, until age had 
abated temporal interests and diminished youthful prejudices ; so 
that they are almost letters from the dead. And he offers them 
near the end of his life, as an oblation to those political principles, 
for which he was indebted for much happiness in his passage 
through it. 

It is necessary to inform the publick that these essays were 
written before the 17th day of November, 1811, when the con- 
tract was made for printing them ; to disclose the reason, why 
no use has been made of any subsequent event. 

THE AUTHOR. 



SECTION THE FIRST* 



ABI$TOCnJlCF t 



jyiii. Adams's -political system, deduces government from 
a natural fate| the policy of the United States deduces it 
from moral liberty. . Every event proceeding from a mo- 
tive, may, in a moral sense, be termed natural. A»d in 
this view, " natural 53 is a term, which will cover all hu mart- 
qualities. Lest, therefore, the terms " natural and moral" 
may not suggest a correct idea of the opposite principles, 
which have produced rival political systems, it is a primary 
object to ascertain the sense in which they are here used. 

Man, we suppose to be compounded of two qualities, dis- 
tinguishable from each other % matter and mind. By mind, 
we analyze the powers of matter 5 by matter we cannot 
analyze the powers of mind- Matter being an agent of infe- 
rior power to mind, its powers may be ascertained by mind; 
but mind being an agent of sovereign power, there is no 
power able to limit its capacity. The subject cannot be an 
adequate menstruum for its own solution. Therefore, as 
we cannot analyze mind, it is generally allowed to be a 
supernatural quality. 

To the human agencies, arising from the mind's power 
of abstraction, we apply the term " moral f 9 to such as are 
the direet and immediate effect of matter, independent of 
abstraction, the terms "natural or physical.' 5 Should Mr. 
Adams disallow the application - of this distinction to his 
theory, by saying, that when he speaks of natural political 
systems, he refers both to man's mental and nhvsieal dqwcfsi 



% ARISTOCHACT. 

and includes whatever the term "moral" can reach ; I an- 
swer, that it is incorrect to confound in one mass the pow- 
ers of mind and body, in order to circumscribe those of 
mind, by applying to the compound, the term " natural, 9 ' if 
it is impossible for mind to limit and ascertain its own 
powers. 

Whether the human mind is able to circumscribe its own 
powers, is a question, between the two modern political par- 
tics. One (of which Mr. Adams is a disciple) asserts that 
man can ascertain his own moral capacity, deduces conse- 
quences from this postulate, and erects thereon schemes of 
government — right, say they, because natural. The other, 
observing that those who affirm the doctrine, have never 
been able to agree upon this natural form of government ; 
and that human nature has been perpetually escaping from 
all forms; considers government as capable of unascertained 
modification and improvement, from moral causes. 

To illustrate the question; let us confront Mr. Adams's 
opinion "that aristocracy is natural, and therefore unavoid- 
able," with one " that it is artificial or factitious, and there- 
fore avoidable." He seems to use the term "natural" to 
convey an idea distinct from moral, by coupling it with the 
idea of fatality. Bui moral causes, being capable of human 
modification, events flowing from them, possess the quality 
of freedom or evitation. As the moral efforts, by which 
ignorance or knowledge are produced, are subjects them- 
selves of election, so ignorance and knowledge, the effects of 
these moral efforts, are also subjects of election ; and igno 
ranee and knowledge are powerful moral causes. If, there- 
fore, by the term "natural" Mr. Adams intended to include 
" moral," the idea of " fatality" is inaccurately coupled 
with it; and if he resigns this idea, the infallibility of his 
system, as being natural, must also be resigned. 

That lie must resign his political predestination, and aU 
its consequences, I shall attempt to prove, by shewing, that 
aristocracies, both ancient and modern, have been variable 
mid artificial ,* that they have all proceeded frcm moral, not 



ARISTOCRACY, 5 

from natural causes ; and that they are evitable and not 
inevitable. 

An opinion "that nature makes kings or nobles" lias been 
tlie creed of political fatalists, from the commencement of 
the sect; and confronts its rival creed <• that liberty and 
slavery are regulated by political law." However lightly 
Mr. Adams may speak of Filiner, it is an opinion in which 
they are associated, and it is selected for discussion, because 
by its truth or falsehood, the folly or wisdom of the policy 
of the United States is determined. 

In the prosecution of these objects, frequent use will be 
made of the word " aristocracy," because the ideas at pre- 
sent attached to it, make it more significant than any other. 

Mr. Adams rears his system upon two assertions: "That 
"there are only three generieal forms of government ; 
" monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, of which all other 
" forms are mixtures ; and that every society naturally pro- 
" duces an order of men, which it is impossible to coniine 
" to an equality of rights." Political power in one man, 
without division or responsibility, is monarchy ; the same 
power in a few, is aristocracy; and the same power in 
the whole nation, is democracy. And the resemblance of 
our system of government to either of these forms, depends 
upon the resemblance of a president or a governor to a 
monarch; of an American senate, to an hereditary order; 
and of a house of representatives, to a legislating nation. 

Upon this threefold resemblance Mr. Adams has seized, 
to bring the political system of America within the pale of 
the English system of checks and balances, by following 
the analysis of antiquity; and in obedience to that authori- 
ty? by modifying our temporary, elective, responsible gov- 
ernors, into moaarchs ; our senates into aristoeratical or- 
ders; and our representatives, into a nation personally 
exercising the functions of government. 

Whether the terms " monarchy, aristocracy and demo- 
cracy," or the one, the few, and the many, are only nume- 
rical; or characteristic, like the calyx, petal and stamina 



$ ARI3T0CBACT. 

oi plants | or complicated, with tlie idea of a balance ; the? 
hare n ever yet singly or collectively been used to describe 
a government, deduced from good moral principles. 

If we are unable to discover in our form of government, 
any resemblance of monarchy* aristocracy or democracy, 
as defined by ancient writers, and bj Mr. Adams himself, 
It cannot be compounded of all, but must be rooted in some 
other political element; whence it follows, that the opinion 
which supposes monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, or 
mixtures of them, to constitute all the elements of govern- 
ment, is an error, which has produced a numerical or exte- 
rior classification, instead of one founded in moral princi- 
ples. 

By this error, the moral efforts of mankind, towards poli- 
tical improvement, have been restrained and disappointed. 
Under every modification of circumstances, these three 
generieal principles of government, or a mixture of them, 
have been universally allowed to comprise the whole extent 
of political volition ; and whilst the liberty enjoyed by the 
other sciences, has produced a series of wonderful discove- 
ries ; politics, circumscribed by an universal opinion (as 
astronomy was for centuries) remained stationary from the 
earliest ages, to the American revolution. 

It will be an effort of this essay to prove, that the United 
States have refuted the ancient axiom, « that monarchy, 
aristocracy and democracy, are the only elements of gov- 
ernment," by planting theirs in moral principles, without 
any reference to those elements ; and that by demolishing 
the barrier hitherto obstructing the progress of political 
science, they have cleared the way for improvement. 

Mr. Adams's system promises nothing. It tells us that 
human' nature is always the same : that the art of govern- 
ment ean never change; that it is contracted into three 
simple principles; and that mankind must either suffer the 
evils of one of these simple principles ; as at Athens, 
"Venice, or Constantinople ; or those of the same principles 
compounded, as ai London, Home, or Laeedemon. And it 



ABISTOCEAC*. 5 

gravely counts up several victims of democratic rage, as 
proofs, that democracy is more pernicious than monarchy 
or aristocracy. Such a computation is a spectre, calculated 
to arrest our efforts, and appal our hopes, in pursuit of po- 
litical good. If it be correct, what motives of preference 
between forms of government remain ? On one hand, Mr. 
Adams calls our attention to hundreds of wise and virtuous 
patricians, mangled and bleeding victims of popular fury ; 
on the other, he might have exhibited millions of plebeians, 
sacrificed to the pride, folly and ambition of monarchy and 
aristocracy ; and, to complete the picture, he ought to have 
placed right before us, the effects of these three principles 
commixed, in the wars, rebellions, persecutions and oppres- 
sions of the English form, celebrated by Mr. Adams as the 
most perfect of the mixed class of governments. Is it pos- 
sible to convince us, that we are compelled to elect one of 
these evils ? After having discovered principles of govern- 
ment, distinct from monarchy, aristocracy or democracy, 
in the experience of their efficacy, and the enjoyment of 
their benefits ; can we be persuaded to renounce the dis- 
covery, to restore the old principles of political navigation, 
and to steer the commonwealth into the disasters, against 
which all past ages have pathetically warned us ? It is ad- 
mitted, that man, physically, is « always the same ;" but 
denied that he is so, morally. Upon the truth or error of 
this distinction, the truth or error of Mr. Adams's mode of 
reasoning and of this essay, will somewhat depend. If it 
is untrue, then the cloud of authorities collected by him 
from all ages, are irrefutable evidence, to establish the 
fact, that political misery is unavoidable ; because man is 
always the same. But if the moral qualities of human 
nature are not always the same, but are different both in 
nations and individuals ; and if government ought to be 
constructed in relation to these moral qualities, and not in 
relation to factitious orders; these authorities do not pro- 
duce a conclusion sc| deplorable. The variety in the kind? 
and degrees of political misery, is alone conclusive evidence 



& ARISTOCRACY. 

of distinct degrees of moral character, capable of unknown 
moral efforts. 

Supposing tliat none of "Sir. Alms's quotations had been 
taken from poetical and fabulous authors ; that no doubt 
could exist of the truth of those furnished by ancient his- 
torians ; and that they had not been dexterously selected to 
fit an hypothesis ; yet their whole weight would have de- 
pended upon the similarity of moral circumstances, be- 
tween the people of America, and those of Greece, Italy, 
Switzerland, England, and a multitude of countries, col= 
leeted from all ages into our modern theatre. 

Do the Americans recognize themselves in a group of 
Goths, Vandals, Italians, Turks ami Chinese? If riot, man 
is not always morally the same. If man is not always mo- 
rally the same, it is not true that lie requires the same poli- 
tical regimen. And thenee a conclusion of considerable 
weight follows, to overthrow the ground-work of Mr. 
Adams's system y for by proving, if he had proved it, that 
his system was proper for those men, and those times, re- 
sorted to by him for its illustration, lie proves that it is 
not proper for men and times of dissimilar moral charac- 
ters and circumstances. 

The traces of intellectual original iiy and diversity ; the 
shades and novelties of the human character, between the 
philosopher and the savage; between different countries, 
different governments, and different eras ; exhibit a com- 
plexity, which the politician and philologist have never 
been able to unravel. Out of this intellectual variety, 
arises the impossibility of contriving one form of govern- 
ment, suitable for every nation ; and also the fact, that 
human nature, instead of begetting one form constantly, 
demonstrates its moral capacity, in the vast variety of its 
political productions. 

Having apprized the reader, by theze general remarks, of 
the political principles to be vindicated or assailed in this 
essays and that an effort will be made to prove, that the 
policy cf the United States is rooted in moral or intellee- 



ARISTOCRACY. 7 

tiial principles, and not in orders, clans or ousts, natural or 
factitious ; this effort must he postponed, until the way is 
opened to it, by a more particular review of Hfv. Adams's 
svstem. To this, therefore, I return. 

He supposes " that every society must naturally prciliteo 
an aristocrat ical order of men, which it will be impossible 
to confine to an equality of rights with other men*" To 
determine the truth of this position, an inquiry must bo 
made into the mode by which these orders have been pro- 
duced in those countries, placed before us by Mr, Adams? 
as objects of terror or imitation. 

In order to understand the question correctly, it is pro- 
per to hear Mr. Adams state it himself. Throughout his 
book, it is constantly appearing, as constituting the great 
principle upon which his system is founded ; but here it 
can only appear in a quotation, selected as concise, explicit 
and unequivocal. 

* " These sources of inequality," says he, (i which ?*re 
« common te every people, and can never be altered by 
« any, because they are founded in the constitution of na* 
6i ture; this natural aristocracy amovg mankind, has been 
" dilated on, because it is a fact essential to he Considered 
" in the constitution of a government. It is a body of men 
« which contains the greatest collection of virtues and aM- 
" lities in a free government ; the brightest ornament and 
<( glory of a nation ,* and may always he made Hie greatest 
" blessing of society , if it be judiciously managed in the 
" constitution. But if it is not, it is always the most dan- 
" gerous; nay, it maybe added, it never fails to be the de- 
" struction of the commonwealth. What shall be done to 
" guard against it ? There is but one expedient yet disco- 
*« vered, to avail the society of all the benefits from 

" body of men, which they are eapableW affording, an t 
Si the same time prevent them from undermining or ii 
*< ding tiie public liberty 5 and that in to throw them f ;'. or 
« at least the most remarkable of them, into one nsse, 

* .Adams'* Def. p. 116— 117— vol. I 3d Philadelphia edition- 



,$ AEISTOCKACT. 

*' together, in the legislature; to keep all the executive 
« power entirely out of their hands, a3 a body | to erect a 
-" first magistrate over them, invested ivith the whole execu- 
" tive authority ; to make them dependant on that execu- 
« tivc magistrate for all public executive employments 5 to 
" give that magistrate a negative on the legislature, by 
« which he may defend both himself and the people from 
" all their enterprises in the legislature ,• and to erect on 
« the other side of them, an impregnable barrier against 
" them, in a house of commons fairly, fully, and adequate- 
" ly representing the people, who shall have the power of 
66 negativing all their attempts at encroachments in the le- 
" gislature, and of withholding both from them and the 
*• crown all supplies, by which they may be paid for their 
66 services in executive offices, or even the public service 
66 carried on to the detriment of the nation.** 

This is the text on which it is proposed to comment ; in- 
cidentally considering several of the arguments, by which 
its doctrine is defended, without the formality of frequent 
quotations. It contains the substance of Mr. Adams's sys- 
tem, and is evidently the English form of government, ex- 
cepting an equal representation of the people, in the pro- 
posed house of commons. 

The position first presenting itself is, « that an aristo- 
cracy is the work of nature." A position equivalent to th© 
antiquated doctrine, " that a king is the work of God." A 
particular attention will be now paid to this point, because 
Mr. Adams 9 § theory is entirely founded upon it. 

Superior abilities constitutes one among the enumerated 
causes of a natural aristocracy. This cause is evidently 
as fluctuating as knowledge and ignorance $ and its capaci- 
ty to produce aristocracy, must depend upon this fluctua- 
tion. The aristocracy of superior abilities will be regu- 
lated by the extent of the space, between knowledge and 
ignorance. As the space contracts or widens? it will be 
diminished or increased; and if aristocracy may be thus 
cUznRisheti* it follows thM, it jrVy be thus destroyed. 



ARISTOCKACY. 9 

"So certain state of knowledge, is a natural or unavoid- 
able quality of man. As an intellectual or moral quality, 
it may be created, destroyed and modified by human power, 
Can that which may be created, destroyed and modified by 
human power, be a natural and inevitable cause of aristo- 
cracy ? 

It has been modified in an extent, which Mr. Adams does 
not even compute, by the art of printing, discovered sub- 
sequently to almost the whole of the authorities which 
have convinced Mr. Adams, that knowledge, or as he might 
have more correctly asserted, ignorance, was a cause of 
aristocracy. 

The peerage of knowledge or abilities, in consequence 
of its enlargement by the effects of printing, can no longer 
be collected and controlled in the shape of a noble order- or 
a legislative department. The great body of this peerage 
must remain scattered throughout e\ery\ nation, by tlie en- 
joyment of the benefit of the press. By endowing a small 
portion of it with exclusive rights and privileges, the in- 
dignation of this main body is excited. If this endowment 
should enable a nation to watch and control an inconsider- 
able number of that species of peerage produced by know 
ledge, it would also purchase the dissatisfaction of its 
numberless members unjustly excluded ; and would be a 
system for defending a nation against imbecility, and in 
viting aggression from strength, equivalent to a project for 
defeating an army, by feasting its vanguard. 

If this reasoning is correct, the collection of that species 
of natural aristocracy (as Mr. Adams calls it) produced by 
superior abilities, into a legislative department, for the pur- 
pose of watching and controlling it, is now rendered im- 
practicable, however useful it might have been, at an era 
when the proportion between knowledge and ignorance was 
essentially different ; and this impracticability is a strong 
indication of the radical inaccuracy of considering aristo- 
cracy as an inevitable natural law. The wisdom of uniting 
exclusive knowledge by exclusive privileges, that it may be 

3 



10 AUfSTOCRACY. 

ooiitroiied by disunitecidgnorance, is not considered as being 
aa hypothetical question, since this aristocratical knowledge 
cannot now exist. 

Similar reasoning applies still more forcibly to the idea 
of nature's constituting aristocracy, by means of exclusive 
virtue. Knowledge and virtue both fluctuate. A steady 
effect, from fluctuating causes, is morally and physically 
impossible. And yet Mr. Adams infers a natural aristo- 
cracy, from the error, that virtue and knowledge are in 
an uniform relation to vice and ignorance ; sweeps away by 
it every human faculty, for the attainment of temporal or 
eternal happiness ; and overturns the efficacy of law, to 
produce private or public moral rectitude. 

Had it been true, that knowledge and virtue were natu- 
ral causes of aristocracy, no fact could more clearly have 
exploded Mr. Adams's system, or more unequivocally have 
dissented from the eulogy he bestows on the English form 
of government. Until knowledge and virtue shall become 
genealogical, they cannot be the causes of inheritable aris- 
tocracy ; and its existence, without the aid of superior 
knowledge and virtue, is a positive refutation of the idea, 
that nature creates aristocracy with these tools. 

Mr. Adams has omitted a cause of aristocracy in the 
quotation, which he forgets not to urge in other places t 
namely, exclusive wealth. This, by much the most formi- 
dable with which mankind have to contend, is necessarily 
omitted, whilst he is ascribing aristocracy to nature j and 
being both artificial and efficacious., it contributes to sus 
tain the opinion, " that as aristocracy is thus artificially 
treated, it may also be artificially destroyed." 

Alienation is the remedy for an aristocracy founded ou 
landed wealth | inhibitions upon monopoly and incorpora- 
tion, for one founded on paper wealth. Knowledge, enlist- 
*id by Mr, Adams under the banner of aristocracy, desert 
ed her associate by the invention of alienation^ and became 
its natural enemy. Discovering its hostility to human hap 
funess, like Brntus. shfc has applied The htp to the nefk t *-? 



ARISTOCRACY. II 

what Mr. Adams calls her progeny •. and instead of main- 
taining the exclusiveness of wealth, contributes to its divi- 
sion by inciting competition, and assailing perpetuities 
How successfully, let England illustrate. She, no longer 
relying upon nature for an aristocracy, is perpetually 
obliged to repair the devastations it sustains from aliena- 
tion • the weapon invented by knowledge • by resorting to 
the funds of paper systems, pillage, patronage and hierar- 
chy, for fresh supplies. 

The reader will be pleased to recollect the question in 
debate. Mr. Adams asserts, that an aristocratical body of 
men is necessary, as being natural. Having thus gotten it, 
he admits that it will be ambitious and dangerous to liberty. 
Being ambitious and dangerous, he infers, that it ought to 
be controlled. And this, he says, can only be effected by 
a king over it, and a house of commons under it ; thus 
placing it between two fires, on account of its strength? 
danger and ambition., 

The entire hypothesis rests upon a single foundation, 
" that aristocracy is natural and inevitable;" and therefore 
this ground-work ought to be well examined. 

The contrivance for erecting a system, by asserting and 
setting out from the will of God, or from nature, is not 
new. Most of those systems of government, to which Mr. 
Adams refers us for instruction, resorted to it • and there- 
fore the propriety of reviving the principle, upon which 
these ancient systems were generally or universally found- 
ed, to revive its effects, must be admitted. « It is the will 
of Jupiter," exclaimed some artful combination of men. 
« The will of Jupiter is inevitable," responded the same 
combination to itself,* and ignorance submitted to a fate ? 
manufactured by human fraud, 

Whenever it is impossible to prove a principle, which is 
necessary to support a system, a reference to an inevitable 
power, calling it God or nature, is preferable to reasoning , 
because every such principle is more likely to be exploded, 
than established by reasoning. For instance ; it would b* 



£3 ARISTOCRACY, 

difficult to convince us, that we ought to ereet an aristocra- 
cy spontaneously ; the folly of which, Mr. Adams unwarily 
admits, by insisting upon the great danger to be appre- 
hended from it. to enhance the merit of his system, in meet- 
ing this danger with a king and a house of commons. And 
therefore the short and safe expedient is, to tell us that na- 
ture has settled the question, by declaring that we shall 
have an aristocracy ; being induced to believe and concede 
this, the difficulty is over ; and the whole system, bottomed 
upon the concession, becomes irrefutable. 

Hence have been derived, the sanctity of oracles, the 
divinity of kings, and the holiness of priests ; and now that 
these bubbles have become the scoff of common sense, ex- 
periment is to decide, whether there remains in America a 
stock of superstition, upon which can be ingrafted, " an 
aristocracy from nature." 

Should it grow upon this stem, Mr. Adams is not entitled 
to the reputation of an inventor. He states the origin of 
the thought, in speaking of the aristocracies of Greece. 
These, he says, had the address to persuade the people, that 
ikey deduced their genealogies from the Gods ; of course 
their titles to aristocratical pre-eminences were of divine 
origin, and inheritable quality. But Mr. Adams's system, 
it must be admitted, improves upon the idea, in relying 
upon some perpetual operation of nature, as a less fortuit- 
ous resource for an aristocracy, than the amorous adven- 
tures of heathen deities. 

In old times, kings as well as nobles were believed to be 
heaven-born. But Mr. Adams confines the proereative 
power of nature to an aristocracy, and thus makes room 
for the human invention of a king and a house of com- 
mons, to check and discipline nature's unkindness. So 
Filmer might have acquired political fame, by proposing a 
house of lords and a house of commons, as checks upon his 
divine or natural king. 

A short review of a few of the aristocracies quoted by 
Mr, Adams, will exiii^f the affinity between the ancient 



ARISTOCRACY* |3 

idea of a divine, and Mr. Adams's, of a natural aristo- 
cracy. 

In speaking of the aristocracies of Greece? ho observes, 1 
that they derived themselves from some of tho heathen 
deities, taking great care to retain the priesthood and reli- 
gious mysteries in their own hands ; and that these precau- 
tions had great influence towards restraining democratical 
innovations, by inspiring the lower orders with fear and 
veneration for their superiors. 

Here then is the origin of a Grecian aristocracy. Was 
it founded in fraud, or begotten by the Gods, as it asserted ? 
A divine origin is not contended for by Mr. Adams ; he 
deduces it from a deception : yet if Jupiter and his asso- 
ciates had maintained their influence to this day, aristocra- 
cy would not have renounced its parentage ; but Uiq degra- 
dation or modern chastity of the heathen deities, compelled 
it to adopt another ancestor more analogous to modern 
theology, and whose progeny was not likely to fail, The 
election has fallen on nature : and the new question, « whe- 
ther aristocracy is fraudulent or natural," has, from this 
circumstance, become the substitute of the old, « whether 
it was fraudulent or divine." 

The Grecian commonalty were never easy, even under 
this heaven-born aristocracy. Bound in the chains of sit* 
perstition, and blinded by the mist of ignorance, something 
was still telling them that it was not right t. something was 
still urging them to correct an evil of which they were 
sensible. It was thy inspiration, Oh ! divine nature ! 
Thou didst unfold to man glimmerings of truth, even in 
ages of superstition and ignorance ! And yet thou art ar- 
raigned as the author of aristocracy, which thou art for 
ever inciting thy children to destroy ! 

The struggle between aristocracy and democracy In 
Greece, is repeatedly urged by Mr. Adams, to prove the 
advantage of balancing them against each other in bur 
legislatures. But it was previously incumbent upon him 
have proved, both that the Grecian aristocracy was 



?n 



li ARISTOCRACY. 

* 

natural and unavoidable, and also that our state of manners 
and knowledge is so exactly theirs, that we cannot avoid a 
similar aristocracy ; namely, one of divine blood ; before 
these precedents, any more than magna charta, could be 
made useful in his mode, to modern liberty. He was un- 
able to do this. We know that man, yoked to obedience by 
superstition, and half bereft of his faculties by ignorance, 
was yet impatient under aristocracy \ though he believed it 
to be the offspring of the Gods : the inference which pre- 
sents itself is, that, enlightened by the effects of printing* 
he will not easily be subjected by one, which he knows to be 
the offspring of men. 

An opposition to aristocratical power seems to have been 
constantly coeval with an advance of national information. 
It began in Greece, appeared at Rome, and has continued 
th& companion of mental improvement, down to the present 
day. As knowledge advanced in England, this opposition 
gained ground, and at length a victory, before that wise and 
natural aristocracy discovered its danger. 

By the natural coalition between knowledge and an en- 
mity to aristocracy, that of England was substantially an- 
nihilated, whilst its forms remained. The nobility have 
seascd to be feared, because they have ceased to be power- 
ful ; and the prohibition of ennobled orders in America, is 
the formal effect of their previous substantial destruction, 
by the progress of knowledge in England. 

Knowledge and commerce, by a division of virtue, of 
talents, and of wealth among multitudes, have annihilated 
that order of men, who in past ages constituted « a natu- 
ral aristocracy," (as Mr. Adams thinks) by exclusive vir- 
tue, talents and wealth. This ancient object of terror has 
shrunk into a cypher; whilst a single executive, proposed 
by Mr. Adams as its check, has become, by the aid of 
patronage and paper, a political figure, at the head of a 
long row of decimals. 

From the tyranny of aristocracy, Mr. Adams takes re- 
fuse vn<\*v the protection of a king, and considers him as 



ARISTOCRACI . 

so essentially the ally and protector of the people, as posi- 
tively to declare, that, « * instead of the trite saying, « no 
« bishop, no king,' it would be a much more exact and im- 
« portant truth to say, no people, no king, and no king, no 
" people ; meaning, by the word kin**, a first magistrate^ 
•'« possessed exclusively of executive power." 

Throughout his system, Mr. Adams infers a necessity 
for a king, or (what is the same thing) of a " first magis- 
trate, possessed exclusively of executive power," from the 
certainty of a natural aristocracy. But if aristocracy is 
artificial and not natural, it may be prevented, by detecting 
the artifice ; and by preventing aristocracy (the only caus« 
for a king) the king himself becomes useless. His utility^ 
according to Mr. Adams's system, consists in checking aris 
toeratical power ; but if no such power naturally exists, i* 
would evidently be absurd to create a scourge (as Mr. Adams 
allows it to be) merely as a cause for a king. 

In order to illustrate the opinion, that the aristocracy 
exhibited to us by Mr. Adams, as creating a necessity for 
his system, is only a ghost., let us turn our eyes for a mo- 
ment towards its successor. 

As the aristocracies of priestcraft and conquest decayed,, 
that of patronage and paper stock grew $ not the rival, but 
the instrument of a king ; without rank or title ; regard- 
less of honor ; of insatiable avarice ; and neither con§pi= 
quous for virtue and knowledge, or capable of being collec- 
ted into a legislative chamber. Differing in all its qualities 
from Mr. Adams's natural aristocracy, and defying his re- 
medy, it is condensed and combined by an interest, exclu- 
sive, and inimical to public good. 

Why has Mr. Adams written volumes to instruct us how 
to manage an order of nobles, sons of the Gods, of exclusive 
virtue, talents and wealth, and attended by the pemp and 
fraud of superstition ; or one of feudal barons, holding 
f^reat districts of unalienable country, warlike, high spirit* 
d, turbulent and dangerous : now fh^ii ttiesc orders are bc 

Adams's Dcf. vok i, p. 87. 



16 ARISTOCRACY. 

more ? Whilst he passes over in silence (he aristocracy of 
paper and patronage, more numerous, more burdensome, 
unexposed to public jealousy by the badge of title, and not 
too honorable or high spirited to use and serve executive 
power, for the sake of pillaging the people. Are these odi- 
ous vices, to be concealed under apprehensions of ancient 
aristocracies, which, however natural, are supplanted by 
this modern one ? 

This subject will hereafter be resumed, as possessing in 
every view, a degree of importance, beyond any political 
question at this era affecting the happiness of mankind. 
Then having previously attempted to prove, that even the 
titled aristocracy of England, is no longer an order, requi- 
ring the combined efforts of a king and a people to curb ; I 
shall proceed to shew, that a new political feature has ap- 
peared among men, for which Mr. Adams's system does not 
provide ; and that England itself cannot now furnish mate- 
rials for a government conformable to her theory, because 
her theory was calculated for a nation less advanced in the 
division of knowledge and land, and in the arts of patronage 
and paper. Now we will return to the subject of a natural 
aristocracy. 

Mr. Adams, with particular approbation, uses the Spar- 
tan government, as an illustration of his hypothesis. The 
wisdom of Lycurgus, he observes, was evinced by a mix- 
ture of monarchical, aristocratical, and democratieal prin- 
ciples ; and the prudent manner in which he adjusted them, 
appeared by its continuance for eight hundred years. Con- 
ceding the Spartan experiment to be a correct emblem of 
the system it is used to exemplify, it is only important to be 
understood, for the sake of beholding in fact, the results to 
be expected from this system itself. 

The kings of Sparta held a relation to the Spartans or 
nobles, somewhat similar to that existing between the king? 
and what is called " the monied interest" in England. No 
vestige of a democratieal balance was discernible during 
the operation e*f $his admired mixture. On the eontrarv, 



ARISTOCRACY- j 7 

Sparta was the constant patron of the aristocratical factions 
throughout Greece, and finally 'ruined it, by a treacherous 
league with the Persians, entered into under the pretence 
of freeing tributary cities, but with the design of advancing 
the interest of aristocratical factions in neighbouring states. 
Does this form of government earn the eulogy, of being the 
best in Greece, because it produced its ruin, by leaguing 
itself with absolute monarchy ? 

Lycurgus, bj the influence of a bought and lying Oracle, 
placed the government in the hands of a minority, excused 
this minority from labour and taxes, and supported if by 
the labour of the majority. The Helots, who were the 
slaves of the government but not of individuals, filled thd 
place of every majority, however denominated, subjected to 
the will of an aristocracy. All the difference is, that the 
Spartan aristocracy obtained of its Helots, subsistence and 
leisure for itself, by the goad and the lash $ and the aristo- 
cracy of paper and patronage, obtains of theirs, wealth and 
luxury, by war, sinecure and taxation. This emblem of 
Mr. Adams's system, commenced in fraud ; flourished, a ty- 
rant ; and died, a traitor % and although Lycurgus divided 
the Spartan aristocracy into several bodies ; distributed it 
into different chambers ; and placed at its head, dependant 
chiefs ; impartiality will only behold an organization of an 
aristocratical minority for self security, however an eager- 
ness to establish a system, may transform it into the effigy 
of an entire nation. 

How exactly emblematical this precedent is of the En 
glish government ! A minority organized, not to preserve, 
but to suppress, popular influence. Such is the effect of 
aristocratical orders, according to the examples adduced in 
their defence. 

More intricate sections of an aristocratical interest exist- 
ed at Venice, than at Sparta or London. Were these also 
contrived to check that interest, for the sake of advancing 
the democratic interest, or for its own safety ? 

It does not appear, whether Lycurgus left the number of 

4 



Id ARISTOCRACY, 

his aristocracy, to be regulated by the efforts of the Hea* 
then Gods or of nature ; but neither the oracle? the Gods, 
or nature could keep it alive. It became naturally extinct 
before the artificial cords of superstition? which bound its 
victims to obedience? were broken. 

N.or is duration, evidence of political perfection. Such 
an argument includes with equal complacency, the despo- 
tisms of the Roman Empire? of China, of France and of 
Turkey ; the aristocracy of "Venice? and the hierarchies of 
Judea and modern Rome. 

The aristocracy of Sparta owed its origin to an oracle? 
that of Rome? to a king. Whilst we see Lycurgus, of the 
royal family and near the throne? and Romulus, himself a 
king? creating an aristocracy in antient times ; and modern 
kings? almost naive r sally doing the same thing ?• it suggests 
a doubt, wiiether kings and noble orders, are really the ene- 
mies and rivals of each other ; and it is a doubt of impor- 
tance, because the single effect beneficial to a nation, expect- 
ed by Mr^ Adams himself from his system, is, that its king 
will defend the people against its nobility. 

It is admitted that patricians and barons have destroyed 
kings, and disclosed an enmity to royalty. It is equally 
true, that aristocratical orders are at this day their friends 
and instruments. A correct theory could only be formed 
upon an estimate of both facts ; Mr. Adams endeavours to 
establish his upon one. Armies have frequently exhi- 
bited an enmity to generals and king ; ought armies there- 
fore to be considered as checks upon their ambition, and 
balances of their power ? 

By comparing the causes of the antient enmity with those 
of the modern affection of noble orders for royalty, we ob- 
tain a result, accounting for these phenomena? fatal to Mr. 
Adams's theory. 

Clientage, clanship, and feudality, have sown various 
countries with petty kings? under various titles, and these 
have been inspired with enmity to a great king? and a great 
king with an enmity to these? by a mutual interest to annoy 



ARISTOCRACY. f8 

each other $ but now that clanship is melted down into one 
mass of civilization, and baronies into private estates, petty 
kingship is annihilated, and noble orders arc completely 
sensible, that ribbon, livery and escutcheon, are not means 
for assaulting kings, equivalent to subjects, castles and prin- 
cipalities. 

Admitting monarchy to be an evil, the ratio of the evil 
must be increased or diminished hj its quantity, and it was 
evidently the comparative interest of the people to diminish 
the number of kings, for the sake of contracting the oppres- 
sions of monarchy. In England, one king, would be less 
mischievous than one hundred. This motive actuated the 
people to assist the great king to destroy the little kings ; 
and ambition, not the popular interest, induced the great 
king to avail himself of this assistance. But when the pet- 
ty monarchies, which had excited the jealousy, and produ- 
ced the coalition, of one king and the people, were destroy- 
ed, this jealousy transferred itself to the allies. Having ac- 
quired a complete victory, they became objects of danger to 
each other and resorted to mutual precautions. Represen- 
tation, invented by the crown to destroy the barons, was 
used by the people against the crown ; and is now used hy 
the crown against the people. The conquered nobility, re- 
duced from sovereigns to subjects, became the chief disci- 
ples of royal patronage ; and having lost the power of an- 
noying the king, revenged itself upon the people, by uniting 
with the king to annoy them. 

The result Ave obtain from this short history, is, that no- 
ble orders, divested of royalties, and reduced to the degree 
of subjects, are the instruments of kings ; but that such or- 
ders, chiefs of clans, and possessed of dominions, are inimi- 
cal to a monarchy, sufficiently powerful to suppress their 
own. Thus these phenomena are reconciled, and the alli- 
ance between kings and nobles in some eases, and their en- 
mity in others accounted for. When the reasons inducing 
kings to destroy barons and to create lords are understood, 
the interest of the people to aid them in the first work* and 



W ARISTOCRACY. 

to oppose them in the second, will be discerned ; and Mr. 
Adams's system must sustain the shock of admitting, that a 
king cannot be a good remedy against the evils of any spe- 
cies of aristocracy, created by himself for an instrument, 
not for a check of monarchical power. 

The aristocratical varieties just described, evince a facti- 
tious origin ; and the frauds practised by the Roman aris- 
tocracy for self-preservation, in common with its Grecian 
predecessor, acknowledge a similar ancestry. It usurped 
the dignities of government, monopolized public property, 
enriched itself by conquest and by forcing the people to bor- 
row at exorbitant usury of itself, to supply the loss of labour 
whilst fighting for the lands it monopolized, assumed the 
priesthood, practised upon the vulgar superstition, and im- 
pressed an idea that its progeny was well born, by prohibit- 
ing the connubial intercourse between itself and inferior 
orders. Nature needed not these arbitrary and fraudulent 
helps, in manufacturing aristocracy, had she been its parent. 

And what was the fate of this Roman aristocracy, thus 
entrenched behind law, religion and robbery ? It was modi- 
fied occasionally by popular lucid intervals, until the people, 
wearied with its injuries and frauds, took refuge from the 
oppression of five hundred tyrants under that of one. Then 
this ancient aristocracy merged in a despotism, and for cen- 
turies remained in a state of abeyance. Vfhy may not a 
modern aristocracy merge in the principle of representa- 
tion ? The peerage of England, like the conscript fathers 
under an Emperor, being in this state of abeyance, so little 
requires Mr. Adams's king and commons to control it, that 
it would naturally become extinct, except for the nourish- 
ment of royal patronage. 

Mr. Adams's hypothesis, being evidently borrowed from 
the English model, we will view that model with more 
attention than will be devoted to other forms of government. 

For the sake of perspicuity, I shall call the ancient aris- 
tocracy, chiefly created and supported by superstition, « the 
aristocracy of the first age ;" that produced by conquest. 



ABX9-«'0€RA€Y-, %X 

known by the title of the feudal system, « the aristocracy 
of the second age ;" and that erected by paper and patron- 
age, " the aristocracy of the third or present age." If aris- 
tocracy is the work of nature, by deserting her accustomed 
constancy, and slily changing the shape of her work, she has 
cunningly perplexed our defensive operations : to create the 
aristocracy of the first age, she used Jupiter ; of the se- 
cond, Mars ; and of the third, Mercury. Jupiter is de- 
throned by knowledge ; the usurpations of Mars are scat- 
tered by commerce and alienation | am! It only remains tc 
detect the impostures of Mercury, 

And in order to avoid the confusion,? arising from a com- 
plication of ideas, it is necessary to remind the reader, that 
Mr. Adams does not use the terms <* natural aristocracy" 
in relation to a fluctuating superiority in mind or body ; 
but in relation to a superiority, capable of being collected 
into a legislative chamber, and permanently transmitted by 
descent. To this latter idea he limits his meaning, by il- 
lustrating it with the British system. Therefore superiori- 
ties in mind or body, must be excluded from a correct sur- 
vey of Mr. Adams's natural aristocracy ; for these would 
still adhere to the wisest or tallest individual, and not to 
the issue of an hereditary nobility. 

England furnishes a perfect view of the aristocracies of 
the second and third age ; and it is probable that a modifi- 
cation of the aristocracy of the first age, existed there also 
in the times of the Druids ; but we shall only use the exam- 
pie of England for the illustration of the two ethers. 

In France, the aristocracy of the second age, had become 
so feeble, that it fell, almost without a struggle ; and being 
more numerous and wealthy than the same species of aris- 
tocracy in England, its imbecility furnishes a suspicion, that 
its English correlative does not substantially exist. 

A real aristocracy is allowed to be formidable and dan- 
gerous ; but the qualities, necessary to create an aristocra- 
cy according to Mr. Adams, should appear in the English 
peerage, to defend the precaution of monarchy ; just as ■■ 



%% ' AKISTOCBACYa 

danger of war, could only defend the bitter precaution of & 
standing army. 

Reader, pause, and recollect several of the ingredients 
GQinpounding aristocracy, in the opinion of Mr. Adams. 
Bo you behold them in the English peerage ? Do you be- 
fcoid an exclusive mass of virtue, almost inducing you to ex- 
claim «* these are the sons of the Gods ?" Do yon behold an 
exclusive mass of talents, compelling you to acknowledge 
** that these are sages qualified to govern V 9 Do you behold 
sit exclusive mass of wealth, purchasing and converting in- 
to armies, clients and followers ?* Or do you behold a band 
*f warriors inured to hardships, skilled in war, and inspi- 
ring fear and love ? Truth compels you to acknowledge, 
that you cannot discern a solitary particle of these quali- 
ties, so essential to aristocracy according to Mr. Adams. 
And will you, against an acknowledgment which you can- 
not withhold, concur with Mr. Adams in believing, that 
sueh. a body of men as the English nobility, ought to be pla- 
ced in a legislative branch, that it may be guarded by a 
ting and a house of commons ? 

Mace the democracy of England on one side, and the no- 
bility ©nthe other ; engage them in hostilities, and view the 
combat. Let the warfare be moral or physical. Still the 
combat would be like that between the universe and an 
?,tom. The king, without his aristocracy of the third age, 
would be but a feather on either side. This fact was ex- 
perimentally settled in France. The French nobility civil 
and hierarchical, were more numerous, and exceeded the 
English in every aristocratical ingredient mentioned by Mr, 
Adams ; yet with the king at its head, it was hardly felt as 
a power by the democracy, and would not have been felt, 
except for the combination of kingdoms by which it was aid- 
ed. Is there then any real cause of apprehension in the 
fallen peerage of England ? 

Suppose the people of England should attempt to abolish 
Monarchy. Both the aristocracy of the present age, and 
Use nobility would arrange themselves in its defence, 



ARISTOCRACY, i5 

Which would be most formidable ? The remnant or hiero- 
glyphiek of the feudal system, would indeed display a ric!i= 
culous pomp, and imbecile importance ; it would appear 
armed with title, ribbon and symbol, and evince its weak- 
ness by tottering under shadows. But the real aristocracy 
of the present age ; neither begotten by the Gods, the curs® 
of conquest, nor the offspring of nature $. the aristocracy of 
patronage and paper would draw out its fleets, armies, pub- 
lic debt, corporate bodies and civil offices. Which species of 
aristocracy, I ask again, would be the strongest auxiliary 
for despotism, and the most dangerous enemy to the nation 2 
And yet Mr. Adams has written three volumes, to escito. 
our jealousy against the aristocracy of motto.- and blazon? 
without disclosing the danger from the aristocracy of pa- 
per and patronage ; that political hydra of modern laven- 
tion, whose arms embrace a whole nation, whose ears Iiear 
every sound, whose eyes see all objects, and whose hands 
can reach every purse and every throat. 

The faint traces discernible in England, of the aristocra- 
cy of the second age, evidently disclose a revolution In its 
qualities, which must have been produced by a cause , and 
when we perceive, that the present nobility no longer awa- 
ken the jealousy of the king, or attract the attention of th& 
people, it behoves us to ascertain this cause, in order t© un- 
derstand what aristocracy is \ and to distinguish between 
that which is nominal and that which is real ; betivgeis 
Chilperie, and a Charles Martel. 

The circumstances which constituted the- cause of this re- 
solution, disclose the wounds which destroyed the aristo- 
cracy of the second age, and the impossibility of its exist- 
ence, whilst these circumstances remain. Its essence con- 
sisted of chivalry, principality, sovereignty, splendor, mu- 
nificence and vassalage % its shadow, of title. Of all these 
constituents, except the last, it has been stript by subject- 
ing it to a competition with talents, and exposing it to th« 
effects of commerce and alienation. Plebeians at 



g& ARISTOCRACY. 

compeers ot these titled patricians in wealth, and they, the 
eompeei s of Plebeians in subjection to law ; and the equali- 
sing spirit of knowledge has exalted one class, and reduced 
the other, to the common standard of mortal men. 

An endeavour to record the magnanimity, ambition and 
consequence, exhibited by the British peerage, would con- 
duct us precisely to the era of the change, at which the his 
tory would stop of itself, in defiance of the historian ; it 
would terminate where the history of patronage and paper 
begins, because one form of aristocracy supplants another : 
and it would pass on from the dead to the living, as in the 
case of any other succession. Thence forward, the English 
peerage gradually sunk into the aristocracy ©f the third 
age ; it became the creature of patronage, and the subject 
of paper ; and although it is seen on account of a legislative 
formulary, it is as little regarded by the nation, as a butter- 
fly by a man in agony. Its number is recruited from the 
corps raised and disciplined by the system of patronage and 
paper : and the claims it once possessed to superior know- 
ledge, virtue, wealth and independence, have been long 
since immolated at the shrines of printing, alienation and 
executive power. 

Nor does Great Britain possess the materials for revi- 
ving the aristocracy of the first or second age, or erecting 
one in any respect correspondent to that contemplated by 
Mr. Adams's political scheme. If this assertion is esta- 
blished, his hypothesis is destroyed. It is therefore allow- 
able to bring it again into view, that an argument so im- 
portant, may be better understood. 

Every society, in Mr. Adams's opinion, will naturally 
produce a class of men minor in number, hut superior to the 
major class in virtue, abilities and wealth \ and hence, im- 
portant, dangerous and ambitious. That they may be 
watched and controlled, they must be thrown into a separate 
legislative body, and balanced by a king on one side, and a 
house of Commons on this other ; otherwise they will usurp 
thegove"nme?>f. 



ARISTOCRACY. $$ 

This assertion depends upon a plain computation Car 
a class of men, capable of being condensed in a legislative 
chamber, under the eye of the king and the Commons, be 
found in Great Britain, possessing more virtue, wisdom and 
wealth, than the rest of the nation ; or even a portion suffi- 
ciently exclusive, to render it important, dangerous 
ambitious? And if such a class could have been fpincf, 
would not its importance and ambition presently become 
victims to printing, alienation and commerce ? 

If it be admitted, that the mass of virtue, wisdom and 
wealth, remaining with the people of Great Britain, infi- 
nitely exceeds that collected into the present house of lords. 
Mr. Adams's system contains the palpable error, of pro- 
viding against the importance, danger and ambition of a 
diminutive portion of the virtue, wisdom and wealth of 
a nation, and of not providing against the importance, dan- 
ger and ambition of the great mass of these qualities. This 
great mass, it may be answered, will be prevented from do- 
ing harm to the nation, by the representative principle to 
be found in the house of commons. If that principle is ca- 
pable of managing the great mass of virtue, wisdom and 
wealth, it is also capable of managing an inconsiderable 
portion of this mass ; and hence results the propriety of an 
elective, and the impropriety of an hereditary senate, upon 
Mr. Adams's own principles. 

In this argument, Mr. Adams's definition of aristocracy 
is adhered to ; he makes it to consist in a dangerous share 
of virtue, wisdom and wealth, held by a number of indivi- 
duals, so few, as to be capable of constituting a legislative 
branch. The difference between us is, that his computa- 
tion to make out a fact analagous to his system, must refer 
to the period of feudal aristocracy; mine takes the fact 
now existing, as the best foundation for political inferences, 
to be now applied. 

But his definition undoubtedly possesses a considerable 
share of truth, and suggests an observation extremely plain, 
The possession by a few, of the major part of the whole 

4 



ARISTOCRACY. 

stock of renown, talents or wealth, within the compass of a 
society, was the moral cause which supported the aristocra- 
cies of the first and second ages ; when the cause ceased, 
the effects ceased also ; and the aristocracies of supersti- 
tion and the feudal system disappeared. But this effect 
may be revived by reviving its cause. A monopoly by a few, 
of renown, talents or wealth, may be reproduced, by su- 
perstition, conquest or fraud ; and the question is, whether 
this would be advisable, for the sake of trying the efficacy of 
his system. 

We must turn our eyes once more towards England, in 
order to illustrate the necessity for this reproduction, as the 
only means of erecting an aristocracy. We see there a 
chamber of nobility. But where is its exclusive renown ? 
Vanished with superstition and entails. Where are its ex- 
clusive talents ? Buried by the art of printing in the same 
grave with ignorance. Where is its exclusive wealth ? 
Pouring through the sluices of dissipation, opened by alien- 
ation and commerce. And where is its heroism ? Conse- 
crated in the temple of luxury. These elements of aristo- 
cracy are gone, and the spectre only remains, to assail our 
fears in behalf of the system I am contesting. But the sys- 
tem of patronage and paper has reproduced a monopoly of 
wealth. What ! have Pylades and Orestes at length quar- 
relled, and does one adhere to the English peerage, whilst 
the other deserts to this English system ? 

This apparition of aristocracy is not however devoid of 
malignity, arising from its privilege of uttering legislative 
incantations. As to that kind of ambition which impels he- 
roes to the perpetration of crimes : as to those enterprises 
which disturb nations, and excite the jealousy of kings i 
the innocence of the English nobility is incontestable. 
Therefore these nobles are no longer jealous of the king, nor 
the king of them, And however speciously the system oi 
king, lords and commons, is attempted to be filtered by the 
supposition of a mutual jealousy ; however correctly the 
fact migkt have warranted such a supposition, when English 



ARISTOCRACY. %1 

lords were feudal barons ; now that they are only titled 
courtiers, mutual harmony, the probable effect, is equally 
warranted by the actual fact. King, lords and commons 
are melted up together by the aristocracy of the third age* 
retaining, like Cerberus, three mouths, and yet possessing 
all the defects of political power collected into one body, so 
ably demonstrated by Mr. Adams ; and the unhappy En- 
glish are exposed to all the oppressions of a substantial aris- 
tocracy existing in the monopolies -of paper and patronage, 
and to all the evils of a legislative power in the ghost of an 
unsubstantial one. 

We are ready to acknowledge that extraordinary virtue 
talents and wealth united, will govern, and ought to governs 
•ad yet it is denied that this concession is reconcileable with 
the system of king, lords and commons. If a body of men 
which possesses the virtue, talents and wealth of a nation, 
ought to govern ; it follows, that a body of men, which does 
not possess these attributes, ought not to govern. 

The aristocracy of Rome for instance, did, at certain pe- 
riods, possess a greater proportion of virtue, talents and 
wealth, than can be found in any cast or order of men at 
present, among commercial nations : which, and not the 
house of lords in England, Mr. Adams must have had in hi? 
eye, when in speaking of an aristocracy, he utters the fol- 
lowing expressions, " it is the brightest ornament and gh> 
" ry of a nation, and may always be made the greatest hies 
" sing of society, if it be judiciously managed in the consti- 
" tution ;" unless he can shew us, that the English house of 
lords merits this eulogy. 

Plebeian ignorance was both the cause and justification 
of the Roman aristocracy. That might have been a worse 
magistrate, than patrician knowledge : and the magic cir- 
cle drawn by superstition around the conscript fathers, 
might have been necessary to restrain the excesses of a 
rude nation inclosed within a single city. But this supplies 
no argument in favor of an aristocracy, in societies not of 
national aggregation, but of national dispersion : not *f 



&1 ARISTOCRACY. 

national ignorance, but of national intelligence ; not sustain 
ed by superstition, but by a common interest. 

Similar causes produced the feudal aristocracy. The 
conquering tribes were moving cities and colonising armies ; 
anil hereditary privileges were preferred to national annihi- 
lation. The feudal commanders, compared with their ig- 
norant vassals, possessed that superiority in renown, talents 
and wealth, which might have produced the feudal system, 
as the moral effect of these moral causes. Such a form of 
government might have been the best which these moving 
cities, these tribes or these armies could bear, and yet exe- 
crable for a nation, not in the same moral state. 

Raving thus conceded to Mr. Adams, that wherever a 
possess the mass of the renown, virtue, talents and 
wealth of a nation, that they will become an aristocracy, 
and probably ought to do so ; it would be a concession, strict- 
ly reciprocal, to admit, that wherever no such body is to be 
found, an aristocracy ought not to be created by legal as- 
signments of wealth and poverty. As the first species of 
minority will govern, because of the power arising from 
such monopolies only, so no other species can, without these 
sources of power. Where its sources are, power will be 
found ; and hence the great mass of wealth, created by the 
system of paper and patronage, has annihilated the power 
of the didactick and titled peerage of England ; because it 
has not a sufficient mass of virtue, renown, talents or 
wealth, to oppose against stock and patronage. 

The aristocracies of the first and second ages were in- 
debted for their power to ignorance, fraud and superstition; 
now reason, sincerity and truth, are demanded by the hu- 
man mind. It disdains to worship a pageant or fear a 
phantom, and is only to be guided by views of interest or 
happiness. This change in the human character indicates 
an impossibility of reviving the principles which sustained 
the aristocracies of the first and second age, when mankind 
Relieved in the Gods of a pantheon, and in the prophetic 
ers of convulsed women. 



ARISTOCI^CY. %$ 

Talents and virtue are now so widely distributed, as tc 
have rendered a monopoly of either, equivalent to that of 
antiquity, impracticable ; and if an aristocracy ought to 
have existed, whilst it possessed such a monopoly, it ought 
not also to exist, because this monopoly is irretrievably lost 
The distribution of wealth produced by commerce and 
alienation, is equal to that of knowledge and virtue, produ- 
ced by printing ; but as the first distribution might be arti- 
ficially counteracted, with a better prospect of success than 
the latter, aristocracy has abandoned a reliance on a mono- 
poly of virtue, renown and abilities, and resorted wholly to 
a monopoly of wealth, by the system of paper and patro- 
nage. Modern taxes and frauds to collect money, and not 
ancient authors, will therefore afford the best evidence of 
its present character. 

A distribution of knowledge, virtue and wealth, produced 
public opinion, which ought now to govern for the reason 
urged by Mr. Adams in favour of aristocracy. It is the de- 
elaration of the mass of national wealth, virtue and talents. 
Power, in Mr. Adams's opinion, ought to follow this mass 
in the hands of a few, because it is the ornament of society* 
It is unimportant whether an aristocracy is a natural, phy- 
sical or moral effect, if its cause, by means, natural, physi- 
cal or moral, may be lost or transferred. Whenever the 
mass of wealth, virtue and talents, is lost by a few and 
transferred to a great portion of a nation, an aristocracy no 
longer retains the only sanctions of its claim ; and wherever 
these sanctions deposit themselves, they carry the interwo- 
ven power. By spreading themselves so generally through 
out a nation, as to be no longer compressible into a legisla- 
tive chamber, or inheritable by the aid of perpetuity and 
superstition, these antient sanctions of aristocracy, become 
the modern sanctions of public opinion. And as its will 
(now the rightful sovereign upon the self-same principle^ 
urged in favor of the best founded aristocracy) can no 
longer be obtained through the medium of an hereditary 
order, the American invention of applying the doctrine o 



m A&ISTOCRACY. 

responsibility to magistrates, is the only one yet discovered 
for effecting the same object, which was effected by an aris- 
tocracy, holding the mass of national virtue, talents ami 
wealth. This mass governed through such an aristocracy t 
This mass cannot now govern through any aristocracy* 
This mass has searched for a new organ, as a medium for 
exercising the sovereignty, to which it is on all sides allow- 
ed to be entitled ; and this medium is representation. 

When the principles and practice of the American policy 
oome to be considered, one subject of inquiry will be, whe- 
ther public opinion, or the declaration of the mass of na- 
tional virtue, talents and wealth, will be able to exercise 
this its just sovereignty, in union with the system of paper 
and patronage. If not, it is very remarkable, that this sys- 
tem, denominated the aristocracy of the third age, is equal- 
ly inimical to Mr. Adams's principles and to mine. "We 
both assign political power to the mass of virtue, talents and 
wealth in a nation. He only contends for an aristocracy 
from a supposition that it must possess this mass, and be the 
only organ of its will ,• I acknowledge the sovereignty of 
these qualities, deny their residence in a minority compres- 
sible into an aristocracy, and contend for a different organ. 
In order to discover whether the aristocracy of paper and 
patronage, is a good organ for expressing the will of the 
sovereign we have agreed upon, let us return to England, 
and consider, whether the revolution, which finally destroy- 
ed the aristocracy of the second age, and established that 
of the third, has placed the government in the hands of the 
wealth, virtue and talents of the nation, or subjected it to 
the influence of public opinion. 

If you had seen the vulture preying upon the entrails of 
the agonized Prometheus, would you have believed, though 
Pluto himself had sworn it, that the vulture was under the 
control of Prometheus ? If you could not have believed this, 
neither can you believe, that the concubinage between a 
government, and the system of paper and patronage, is an 
organ of national opinion, or of the wealth, virtue and ta- 



akistocracy, §4 

lents of the nation, mid not a conspiracy between avarice 
and ambition ; because, it is as impossible that a nation 
should derive pleasure from a government founded in the 
principle of voraciousness, as the man from the laceration 
of his bowels. 

It has been said, that paper and office are property : and 
as by their means, a minority may bring into its coffers, the 
whole profit of national labour, so it ought to be considered 
as the nation. Had Prometheus fattened by being fed upo& 
by the vulture, it would have given some colour to this in- 
genious deception. 

Again it has been said, that the system of paper and pat- 
ronage encourages commerce, agriculture, manufacturer 
and conquest; it aggravated the misery of Prometheus* 
that his liver was made to grow for the gratification of a 
harpy, without appeasing its voracity. 

The difficulty of producing a correct opinion of the cause 
and consequences of the new-born aristocracy of paper and 
patronage, surpasses the same difficulty in relation to the 
aristocracies of the first and second ages, as far as its supe- 
rior importance. The two last being substantially dead, 
their bodies may be cut up, the articulation of their bones 
exposed, and the convolution of their fibres unravelled t 
but whenever the intricate structure of the system of paper 
and patronage is attempted to be dissected, we moderns 
surrender our intellects to yells uttered bj the living mon- 
ster, similar to those with which its predecessors astonish- 
ed, deluded, and oppressed the world for three thousand 
years., The aristocracy of superstition defended itself by 
exclaiming, the Gods ! the temples ! the sacred oracles ! 
divine vengeance ! and Elysian fields ! — -and that of paper 
■and patronage exclaims, national faith ! sacred charters ! 
disorganization ! and security of property ! 

Let us moderns cease to boast of our victory over super- 
stition and the feudal system, and our advancement in know- 
ledge. Let us neither pity, ridicule or despise the ancients* 
as -lupes of frauds and tricks, which we can so easily 



%% AHISTOCRACY. 

discern j lest some ancient sage should rise from his grave* 
and ansv/er, i( You moderns are duped by arts more obvi- 
" ously fraudulent, than those which deceived us. The 
*< agency of the Gods was less discernable, than the eifects 
- ( of paper and patronage. We could not see, that the tem- 
« poral and eternal pains and pleasures, threatened and 
r < promised by our aristocracy, could not be inflicted or be- 
« stowed by it ; you see throughout Europe the effects of 
" your aristocracy, Without your light, oracles were 
" necessary to deceive us ; with the help of printing, and 
" two detections, you are deceived by aristocracy in a third 
5 < form, although it pretends neither to the divinity nor he- 
« roism claimed by its two first forms. And under these 
*« disadvantages, the impositions of our aristocracy were 
« restrained within narrower bounds than those of yours. 
" Did any aristocracy of the first age, extend its annual 
" spoliation from one to thirty -five millions of pounds ster- 
** ling, in less than a century V 9 

Whenever one fraud is detected, ambition and avarice 
have hitherto invented another. The aristocracy of the 
second age, being weakened in England, by the wars be- 
tween the houses of York and Lancaster, Henry the seventh 
seized the opportunity of breaking its power. The four 
succeeding kings, (excluding Edward) uncontrolled by the 
remaining aristocracy, though more warlike and wealthy 
than the present ; or by the degree of knowledge, virtue and 
wealth among the people ; were so completely despotic, as 
to be even able to modify religion, according to the sugges- 
tions of their amours, their bigotry? or their minions. The 
barons were conquered, and knowledge, virtue and wealth, 
had not been sufficiently dispersed to create the sovereignty 
of public opinion. So that during these four reigns, society 
remained in an anomalous state, between the suppression 
of an aristocracy, and the acquisition of knowledge, virtue 
and wealth by the people, from printing and commerce. 
Charles the fir*i lost his life, because he either did not mark 
ihz progtess of this acquisition, or had not liberality enough 



AlilSTOCKACX 38 

io yield to it. His son, less magnanimous than his father, 
escaped a similar fate by the national weariness of bigotry, 
fraud and tyranny united; and by practising in some degree 
the system of corruption, William of Orange farther ad- 
vanced this baleful system; and Sir Robert Walpole com- 
pletely organized the aristocracy of the present age, for 
the purpose of corrupting those, whom the progress of 
knowledge had enlightened. 

From Henry the eighth to that time, the nobility had 
been but slightly felt as a political power ; and Walpole's 
project for the modern aristocracy, substantially annihi- 
lated them. During this interval, superstition, ignorance 
and feudal power were declining. By their aid, minorities 
had oppressed nations. By their aid, minorities had erect- 
ed themselves into the aristocracies of the first and second 
ages ; and patronage and paper became the substitute for 
these forms of aristocracy, because ayarice and ambition,, 
having discovered that man could no longer be made sub- 
servient to their designs by means of his ignorance, saw the 
necessity of obtaining the same subserviency by means of his 
avarice. 

We discern but two kinds of aristocracy ; that which is 
the tyrant itself, and that which is the instrument of the 
tyrant. The ancient feudal and hierarchical aristocracies 
of England were tyrants themselves. The modern nobles 
and bishops ; the patronage and stock interests ; the gene- 
rals and titulars of Bonaparte, and the mandarins of China, 
are instruments of tyranny. The same reasons induc- 
ing the people to unite with kings against aristocracies, 
which were themselves tyrants, ought to determine them to 
assail such as are the instruments of kings. Independent 
of kings, they are universally the first kind of evil ; depend- 
ent on them, the second. But mankind are distracted by an 
host of political doctors, who utter prejudices imbibed from 
obsolete cases or existing interests. The whole college 
agree that the British policy is afflicted with some invete 
rate distemper, but each doctor asserts his favorite limb to 

6 



34 ARISTOCRACY. 

be sound ; and whilst the aggregate by one opinion pro- 
nounces it to be in the agonies of death, the same aggregate 
by many opinions pronounces it to be in perfect health. 
Funding, banking, patronage, charter, mercenary armies 
and partial bounties, are each admired as a panacea by some 
one ; even corruption is defended as a happy expedient for 
managing the house of commons ; and doctor Balance, ve- 
nerable with the rust of antiquity, excites universal asto- 
nishment by declaring with unaffected gravity, that a nobi- 
lity endowed with enormous wealth, virtue and talents, is 
only wanting to renovate it throughout. Such doctors are 
labouring to patch up a policy for the United States, out of 
the self-same limbs, with an animal thus compounded, 
lying in convulsions before their eyes. 

The advantage of studying the anatomy of a dead body, 
is the knowledge of a living one. In like manner, the use- 
fulness of our observations in relation to the aristocracies 
of the first and second ages, consists in opening our way 
towards that of the third. A knowledge of this last, is ca- 
pable of a beneficial application ; whereas a knowledge of 
the aristocracies of superstition and the feudal system, ab- 
stracted from the light they may reflect on that of paper 
and patronage, is only a steril amusement. 

And it was also necessary to lay the ghost of the feudal 
aristocracy, now conjured up only as a decoy to draw the 
publick attention, from its regenerated body, to come fairly 
to the objects of this essay ; among which, an investigation of 
the system of paper and patronage occupies a chief place. 

Preparatory to this, a political analysis is offered to the 
reader, as a key to the system of reasoning, subsequently 
to be pursued. 

It has already been observed, that government is found- 
ed in moral, and not in natural or physical causes, Horn 
the moral qualities of man, being only good and evil, ever. 
form of government must be founded in that principle of 
the two, which prevails, like eYary other human action 
of a moral nature. This analyst is anterior to 



ARISTOCRACY* m 

monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, and is capable of 
displaying the true character ©f every government, of each 
of its sections, and of all its measures 5 objects to which 
the numerical analysis is utterly incompetent. 

For instance : A government, a section of it, or a mea- 
sure, founded in an evil moral principle, such as fraud, am- 
bition, avarice or superstition, must produce correspondent 
effects, and defeat the end of government ; but resting up- 
on a good moral principle, such as honesty, self-government, 
justice and knowledge, its effects will also be good, and 
conformable to the duty and office of government. Where- 
as the numerical analysis cannot with certainty enable us 
to foresee the character of a government, because it has no 
reference to moral causes or effects, good or evil. An ab- 
solute monarch, guided by the good moral qualities of man, 
may produce national happiness ; and so any other anoma- 
lous case under the numerical analysis, may serve to per- 
plex the science of politicks ; because the publick happiness 
ensuing from it, instead of being attributed to the acci- 
dental preponderance of the good class of moral qualities, 
in the monarch, the aristocracy, or the democracy, is too 
often attributed to numerical classification. By exploding 
this analysis, and substituting that of governments, bottom- 
ed upon good or evil moral principles, human happiness will 
less frequently fluctuate with the characters of individuals. 

The reader will be often reminded of these principles,, 
which are now to be applied to the aristocracy of paper 
and patronage. 

This being suggested by, or founded in, the evil moral 
qualities of avarice and ambition, must inevitably produce 
evil effects ; because a system is merely a moral being, and 
a moral demon cannot be a saint. Under either member 
of the numerical classification, a nation has a chance for 
happiness, however inconsiderable, because men may be 
guided by good moral principles; but none under the viciou? 
system of paper and patronage, because an evil moral prin- 
ciple cannot produce good moral effects. That a system. 



36 ARISTOCRACY. 

founded like this, upon evil moral principles, is incapable of 
amelioration from the personal virtues of magistrates, is 
proved by its steady unfluctuating course of effects in Eng- 
land, where its rigorous consistency, and growing severity, 
is neither interrupted nor softened in the smallest degree by 
the virtues of individuals. Martial law and stock law, arc 
naturally and necessarily tyrants, but a man may be a tyrant 
or a patriot. If a political system, founded in evil moral 
principles, proceeds consistently and certainly in the dis- 
pensation of evil to nations, without sustaining impediments 
from the virtues even of its administrators; is it not con- 
ceivable, that one founded in good moral principles, is dis- 
coverable, capable of dispensing good, independently also 
of the vices of its administrators ? One as free from evil 
qualities, as that of paper and patronage is from good, would 
probably effect so desirable an object. 

An enumeration of the effects of the system of paper 
and patronage, will disclose the consistency, between causes 
and effects in the moral world, the vast political influence 
of this system, and its operation upon human happiness., 
The first, is that of its enabling a minor interest, to guide 
and subsist upon a major interest- 
It is not the mode by which this is effected, but the 
effect, which causes oppression. It is the same thing to a 
nation whether it is subjected to the will of a minority, 
by superstition, conquest, or patronage and paper. Whe- 
ther this end is generated by errour, by force, or by fraud, 
the interest of the nation is invariably sacrificed to the in- 
terest of the minority, 

If the oppressions of the aristocracies of the first and 
second ages, arose from the power obtained by minorities, 
how has it happened, that a nation which has rejoiced in 
tfyeir downfal, should be joyfully gliding back into the same 
policy ? How happens it, that whilst religious frauds are 
no longer rendered sacred, by calling them oracles, politi- 
es! fraud should be sanctified, by calling it national credit ? 



ARISTOCRACY. ?■? 

Experience, it is agreed, has exploded the promises o£ ora- 
cles ; does it not testify also to those of paper stock ? 

Paper stock always promises to defend a nation* and 
always flees from danger. America and France saved 
themselves by physical power, after danger had driven pa- 
per credit out of the field. In America, so soon as the 
danger disappeared, paper credit loudly boasted of its capa- 
city to defend nations, and though a deserter, artfully reap- 
ed the rewards due to the conqueror. In France, it trans- 
ferred to fraud and avarice the domains which ought to 
have aided in defending the nation, or to have been restored 
to the former owners. 

Paper credit is a disciple of the doctrine, that truth is 
best ascertained by the sword. The utmost exertion it has 
ever made to enlighten the mind, was by this instrument, 
And the crusade against France, in preference to leaving to 
the arbitrament of man's intellectual powers, an estimate of 
fair experience, is a proof that it only counts its own inte- 
rest, and forgets the evils it inflicts. Otherwise, could pa 
per credit have inflicted upon Britain all the calamities of 
a war, to be closed by her ruin, or by a debt of several 
hundred millions of pounds sterling, merely to prevent the 
French from forming a government for France ? 

Had there existed in England, a single chaste organ 
for expressing and enforcing the public interest, this cru- 
sade to guide opinion, would have been escaped by England, 
as it was by America ; and if no such organ did exist, to 
what but the system of patronage and paper was it owing ? 
It is therefore a menstruum, capable of dissolving the seve- 
ral sections of a government, however divided, into one 
interest or centre ; and of infusing the most unprincipled 
avarice and ambition into the mass. 

Sinecure, armies, navies, offices, war, anticipation and 
taxes, make up an outline of that vast political combination 
concentrated under the denomination of paper and patron 
age. These, and its other means, completely enable it to 
take from the nation as much power and as much wealth. 



38 ARISTOCRACY* 

as its conscience or its no conscience will allow it to re- 
ceive ; and lest the capacity of public loaning to transfer 
private property should be overlooked, it has proceeded in 
England to the indirect sale of private real property. If u 
land tax is sold for a term amounting to the value of the 
land, a proprietor is to buy his own land at its value, or ad- 
mit of a co-proprietor, to whom he must pay that value by 
instalments ; and thus a paper system can sell all the lands 
©f a nation. If national danger should occur after this sale, 
it can only be met by the people ; and the purchaser from a 
paper system, of an exemption from the land tax to-day* 
must be again taxed or fight for his land to-morrow. The 
**ase of this individual is precisely that of every nation* 
made use of directly or indirectly to enrich a paper system y 
it is perpetually at auction, and never receives any thing for 
Itself; because, however ingeniously a paper system can 
manage artificial danger for its own emolument, it is neither 
able nor willing to meet real danger : and however rich it 
is made by a nation, the nation must still defend itself, or 
perish. 

This catastrophe has already arrived in Britain. Swin- 
dled out of endless wealth, by the vauntings of paper credit, 
©fits will and ability to defend liberty and property; that 
hapless nation sees itself taxed and impressed, to increase 
*.he penalty of its own credulity, and to protect that which 
promised to yield protection ; its annual taxes beget annual 
additions to permanent debt, and its endless war with 
France was commenced by the fears of its paper system, 
however this war may have gradually changed its ground. 

The effect of opposite interests, one enriched by and go- 
verning the other, correctly follows its cause. One interest 
is a tyrant, the other its slave. In Britain, one of these 
interests owes to the other above ten hundred millions of 
pounds sterling, which would require twelve millions of 
slaves to discharge, at eighty pounds sterling each. If the 
debtor interest amounts to ten millions of souls, and would 
}se worth forty pounds stealing round? sold for slaves, it pays 



ARISTOCRACY, \3& 

twelve and an half per centum on its capitation value, to 
the creditor interest, for the exclusive items of debt and 
bank stock. This profit for their masters, made by those 
who are called freemen, greatly exceeds what is generally 
made by those who are called slaves. But as nothing is 
calculated except two items, by including the payments for 
useless offices, excessive salaries, and fat sinecures, it is 
evident that one interest makes out of the other, a far 
greater profit than if it had sold this other, and placed the 
money in the most productive state of usance. 

Such is the freeman of paper and patronage. Had Di- 
ogenes lived until this day, he would have unfledged a cock 
once more, and exhibited him as an emblem, not of Plato's 
man, but of a freeborn Englishman. Had Saneho knowte 
of a paper stock system, he would not have wished for the 
government of an island inhabited by negroes. Has Pro- 
vidence used this system to avenge the Africans, upon the 
Europeans and Americans ? 

Whatever destroys an unity of interest between a go 
vernment and a nation, infallibly produces oppression and 
hatred. Human conception is unable to invent a scheme,* 
more capable of affiicting mankind with these evils, thaa 
that of paper and patronage. It divides a nation into two 
groups, creditors and debtors ; the first supplying its want 
of physical strength, by alliances with fleets and armies, and 
practising the most unblushing corruption. A consciousness 
of inflicting or suffering injuries, fills each with malignity 
towards the other. This malignity first begets a multitude 
of penalties, punishments and executions, and then ven- 
geance. 

A legislature, in a nation where the system of paper 
and patronage prevails, will be governed by that interest, 
and legislate in its favour. It is impossible to do this, with* 
out legislating to the injury of the other interest, that is^ 
the great mass of the nation. Such a legislature will cre- 
ate unnecessary offices, that themselves or their relations 
may be endowed with them. They will lavish the revenue, 



>0 ARISTOCRACY. 

to enrich themselves. They will borrow for the nation, 
that they may lend. They will offer lenders great profits, 
that they may share in them. As grievances gradually ex- 
cite national discontent, they will fix the yoke more secure- 
ly, by making it gradually heavier. And they will finally 
avow and maintain their corruption, by establishing an irre- 
sistible standing army, not to defend the nation, but to de- 
fend a system for plundering the nation. 

An uniform deception resorted to by a funding system, 
through legislative bodies, unites with experience in testi- 
fying to its uniform corruption of legislatures. It professes 
that its object is to pay debts. A government must either 
be the fraudulent instrument of the system, or the system a 
fraudulent instrument of a government ; or it would not 
utter this falsehood to deceive the people. 

This promise is similar to that of protecting property. 
It promises to diminish, and accumulates ; it promises to 
protect, and invades. All political oppressors deceive, in 
order to succeed. When did an aristocracy avow its pur- 
pose ? Sincerity demanded of that of the third age, the 
following confession : "Our purpose is to settle wealth and 
6i power upon a minority. It will be accomplished by na- 
ff tional debt, paper corporations, and offices, civil and mili- 
" tary. These will condense king, lords and commons, a 
" monicd faction, and an armed faction, in one interest. 
" This interest must subsist upon another, or perish. The 
" other interest is national, to govern and pilfer which, is 
" our object ; and its accomplishment consists in getting 
" the utmost a nation can pay. Such a state of success can 
<* only be maintained hy armies, to be paid by the nation, 
i( and commanded by this minority 5 by corrupting talents 
« and courage : by terrifying timidity ; by inflicting penal- 
« ties on the weak and friendless, and by distracting the 
6i majority with deceitful professions. That with which our 
• :i project commences, is invariably a promise to gat a nation 
" out of debt ; but the invariable c-ffeet of it is. to plunge It 
« irretrievably into debt. 55 



AKIS TOCUACY. 41 

The English system of paper and patronage, has made 
these confessions by the whole current of its actions for a 
century, and laboured to hide them by its words. That 
guilt should eternally endeavour to beguile, is natural. Is 
it also natural, that innocence should eternally be its dupe ? 
Is it the character of virtue, in spite of common sense, to 
shut her eyes upon truth, and open her ears to falsehood ? 

A nation exposed to a paroxysm of conquering rage, has 
infinitely the advantage of one, subjected to this aristocra- 
tical system. One is local and temporary ; the other h 
spread by law and perpetual. One is an open robber, who 
warns you to defend yourself ; the other a sly thief, who 
empties your pockets under a pretence of paying your debts. 
One is a pestilence, which will end of itself | the other a 
climate deadly to liberty. 

After an invasion, suspended rights may be resumed, 
ruined cities rebuilt, and past cruelties forgotten ; but in 
the oppressions of the aristocracy of paper and patronage, 
there can be no respite ; so long as there is any thing to 
get 9 it cannot be glutted with wealth ; so long as there is 
any thing to fear, it cannot be glutted with power : other 
tyrants die ; this is immortal. 

A conqueror may have clemency ; he may be generous ; 
at least he is vain, and may be softened by flattery. But a 
system founded in evil moral qualities, is insensible to hu- 
man virtues and passions, incapable of remorse, guided con- 
stantly by the principles which created it, and acts by the 
iron instruments, law, armies and tax gatherers. "With 
what prospect of success, reader, could you address the cle- 
mency, generosity or vanity of the system of paper and pa- 
tronage ? Wherefore has no one tried this hopeless experi- 
ment ? Because clemency, generosity and vanity, arc not 
among the moral qualities which constitute the character 
of an evil moral system. 

The only two modes extant of enslaving nations, arc 
those of armies and the system of paper and patronage. The 
European nations are subjected by both, so that their chain- 



'%% ARI STOCK ACT, 

are doubly riveted. The Americans devoted their effeetu» 
al precautions to the obsolete modes of title and hierarchy, 
erected several barriers against the army mode, and utter- 
ly disregarded the mode of paper and patronage. The ar- 
my mode was thought so formidable, that military men are 
excluded from legislatures, and limited to charters or com- 
missions at will ,* and the paper mode so harmless, that it is 
allowed to break the principle of keeping legislative, execu- 
tive and judicative powers separate and distinct, to infuse 
itself into all these departments, to unite them in one con- 
spiracy, and to obtain charters or commissions for unre- 
stricted terms, entrenched behind publick faith, and out of 
the reach, it is said, of national will ; which it may assail, 
wound and destroy with impunity. This jealousy of ar- 
mies, and confidence in paper systems, can only be justified, 
if the following argument in its defence is correct. 

« An army of soldiers have a separate interest from the 
" nation, because they draw their subsistence from it, and 
" therefore they will combine for their own interest against 
6i the national interest ; but an army of stockjobbers have 
" no such separate interest, and will not combine. Soldiers 
« admitted into the legislature, would legislate in favour of 
" soldiers x but stockjobbers will not legislate in favour of 
" stockjobbers. Soldiers may use our arms to take ouy 
" money ; but stockjobbers cannot use our money to take 
" our arms. Soldiers may adhere to a chief in preference 
" to the nation, as an instrument for gratifying their ava= 
66 rice and ambition upon the nation; but stockjobbers have 
" no avarice nor ambition to be gratified, and will not there - 
" fore adhere to a chief for that purpose. Soldiers are 
:i dangerous, because they assail the liberty of a nation by 
46 open force \ stockjobbers harmless, because they do it by 
»'« secret fraud. All are jealous of soldiers, and therefore 
« they will not be watched ; few are jealous of stockjob- 
« hers, and therefore they will be watehed. Many instan- 
" ces have oecnred of the oppressions by the army system i 
« oi*9 ufstance on3 y of 9 yevf? , v he paper systesfi 



AfilSTOCRACY. 4S 

« for oppression can be adduced ; and as that has lasted 
« only a single century, it would be precipitate to detect and 
« destroy the aristocracy of paper and patronage, in less 
<•' time than was requisite to detect and destroy those of su- 
« perstition and the feudal system. 55 

Alas ! is it true, that ages are necessary to understand, 
whilst a moment will suffice to invent, an imposture ? Is it 
true, that the example of their venerable ancestor, groan- 
ing for a century under the oppressions of this modern sys- 
tem of aristocracy, is incapable of awakening the Ameri- 
cans; and that they themselves must also become a beacon 
for the benefit of a more enlightened era ? Csesar profited 
by the failure of Marius, in the art of enslaving his country ; 
will no nation ever profit by the failure of another in ilw 
art of preserving its liberty ? - 

Let us drop the subject for a moment, and consider whe- 
ther we ought to reject truth, because it is plainly told ? Be- 
cause Marcus Aurelius was despotiek, should we therefore 
speak tenderly of despotism ? Beeause Washington was a 
soldier, should we therefore speak tenderly of standing ar- 
mies ? And because we see around us stockjobbers whom 
we love, ought we therefore to speak tenderly of paper sys- 
tems ? A despot may condemn tyranny $ a soldier may con- 
demn standing armies ; and a stockjobber may condemn pa- 
per systems. In reasoning boldly against the system of pa- 
per and patronage, no private reputation is attacked, more 
than that of Marcus Aurelius would be, by reasoning 
against despotism ; or Washington's, by reasoning against 
standing armies. To insinuate truth only, is to betray it. 
Veracity in terms cannot be censurable; if veracity in mat- 
ter is entitled to approbation. The discharge of a duly, 
cannot require an apology, and without making one, I will 
proceed. 

A paper system proposes to fulfil its promise of defend 
ing a nation, by giving it credit : from which credit, it hi 
fers an increase of national strength. Let us aseei 
what national strength is, before we hastily conclude, thai 



4& ARISTOCRACY. 

it can be created by a stock system. It consists of people 
and revenue. If by any means a nation was deprived of 
half its people, would this add to its strength ? If by a pa- 
per system, it is deprived of half its revenue, can this ei- 
ther add to its strength ? Revenue, like people, is subject to 
numerical limits. Suppose the people of Britain are able 
to pay a revenue of forty millions sterling, but that thirty are 
appropriated to the use of the system of paper and patron- 
age : Are not three fourths of their strength gone, so far 
as it consists of revenue ? But Great Britain with her ten 
millions of free revenue can borrow two hundred millions. 
If strength is to be measured by the power of borrowing, 
she could have borrowed four times as much, had her whole 
revenue been free, and consequently would have been four 
times as strong. 

Strength arising from revenue, is relative. If the free 
revenue of Great Britain is ten millions, and the whole re- 
venue of a rival nation fifteen, all of which is free, then the 
rival nation would possess more money and more credit, ca- 
pable of being applied to national use, than Great Britain 
with an actual revenue of forty millions, thirty whereof 
were enslaved. 

Hence it is obvious, that debt, so far from being either 
strength or credit, is a diminution of both ; and that free- 
dom from debt, is the only genuine source of national 
strength depending on revenue. 

England and France are rival nations. If England was 
bound to pay to France the whole amount of the annual in- 
terest of her debt, it would obviously increase the strength 
and credit of France, and diminish those of England. This 
proves, that it is the receiver and not the payer, who obtains 
an addition of strength and credit. And it also furnishes 
a complete illustration of the effect of the system of paper 
and patronage, upon the real productive interests of society, 
The unproductive but subsisting interests of this system, 
and the productive and taxed interests of society, may be 
called natural enemies, with more justice than France and 



ABISTOCSACY. £5 

England. If the payment by England of thirty millions 
annually to France would subject England to France, will 
not the payment by the productive and taxed interests, of 
the same sum to their natural enemy, the unproductive in- 
terest, subject them also to their natural enemy ? This de- 
monstrates, that strength is gained hj the receiver, and not 
by the payer ; and displays the certainty with which the 
system of paper and patronage will subject a nation, under 
pretence of enabling it to defend itself. 

Hereafter, the doctrine of anticipation will be consi- 
dered : but this machine cannot shake our arguments to 
prove that a nation is weakened, and consequently enslaved 
by debt, unless the power of anticipation is infinite like debt? 
and increases with it ; which will hardly be asserted. 

But if this anticipating resource, did naturally swell 
with debt, still an indebted nation, would be in a state of 
subjection. New anticipations arc exclusively governed hj 
old anticipations ; to borrow, recource must be had to the 
monied interest, and the funds or old anticipations, united 
with paper corporations, constitute that interest. A nation 
therefore which depends upon anticipation, must be govern- 
ed by that interest which governs anticipation ; so that it 
cannot will and judge for itself, like a poorer nation, which 
is independent of anticipation. 

Thus whilst a paper system pretends to make a nation 
rich and potent, it only makes a minority of that nation rich 
and potent, at the expense of the majority, which it makes 
poor and impotent. Wealth makes a nation, a faction or 
an individual, powerful ; and therefore if paper systems 
extracted the wealth they accumulate from the winds, and 
not from property and labour, they would still be inimical 
to the principles of every constitution, founded in the idea 
of national will ; because the subjection of a nation to the 
will of individuals or factions, is an invariable effect of great 
accumulation of wealth ,• but when the accumulation of a 
minority, impoverishes a majority, a double operation, 
doubly rivets this subjection 



46 AEISTOCRACYr 

The delusion of all paper projects is at once detected by 
turning upon them their own doctrine. All boast of doing 
good to a nation. Suppose a nation was to decline this be- 
neficence, and propose to reward it, by doing good to paper 
projects, exactly in the same way they propose to benefit 
(he nation ; that is, by taking from the owners of stock, 
their income, and consigning over to them the taxes and 
(he credit attached to the debtor, with the blessing of a pa- 
per circulation ; the credulity which believes, that these 
institutions do really impose upon nations debt and taxes, 
direct and indirect, from motives of public good, would be 
presently cured by the faltering tongues, the wan faces, and 
the distressing lamentations, which a proposition for this 
exchange would produce. These paper projects which pre- 
tend to be blessings to nations, would be deprecated as 
curses by themselves, if the case was thus altered. 

It is said that paper systems being open to all, are not 
monopolies. He who has money, may buy stock. All then 
is fair, as every man (meaning however only every monied 
man) may share in the plunder. 

Everyman may enlist in an army, yet an army may en- 
slave a nation. A monopoly may be open to a great num- 
ber, yet those who do engage in it, may imbibe the spirit of 
faction ; but it cannot be open to all, because no interest, 
which must subsist upon a nation, can consist of that nation; 
as I cannot fatten myself by eating myself. If every citi- 
zen should go into an army, it would transform that army 
into the nation itself, and its pay and subsistence would 
cease ; in like manner the profits of paper, were they gene- 
rally or universally distributed, would cease ; because each 
citizen would be his own paymaster. Had the objection 
been as true in practice as it is plausible in theory, these 
answers suffice to prove, that it would have converted pa- 
per aristocracies into paper democracies. 

The reason, however, for this apparent common power 
of becoming a stockjobber, consists in the constant necessity 
felt for recruits by every species of aristocracy. The 



ARISTOCRACY* *: 

Mamalukes of Egypt Lave sufficient penetration to discover 
this. No individual, nor an inconsiderable number of indi 
viduals, can enslave a nation. A despot raises soldiers by 
bounties. This system is also recruited by bounties. The 
soldier sometimes deserts, or takes part with the nation^ 
after his bounty is spent; but the bounty of paper systems; 
is so contrived, that it is perpetually going on, and annually 
repeated ; so that the aristocracy of an oppressive system? 
never deserts or takes part with the nation, as the army of 
an oppressive prince has sometimes done. 

Where avarice and ambition beat up for recruits, too 
many are prone to enlist. Kings, ministers, lords and com- 
mons will be obliged to command the army, and share in 
the plunder, or submit to be cashiered. The makers and 
managers of aristocracy, gamble with a certainty of win- 
ning, for a stake extorted and increased by themselves. If 
they deposit their penny, they draw a pound, and augment 
their power. The system of paper and patronage, freights 
annual gallions for a government and a faction, at a na- 
tional mine called industry ; and bestows on the people such 
blessings, as those enjoy who dig up the ores of Peru and 
Mexico. The receivers of the profit drawn from this mine* 
Feap wealth and power ; the earners reap armies, wars, 
taxes, monopolies, faction, poverty and ten hundred millions 
•f debt. This is an English picture. America hopes that 
her governors and citizens are neither ambitious nor avari- 
cious, and upon this solid hope, is committing the custody 
of her liberty to the same system. Oh! America, America, 
thou art the truly begotten of John Bull ! It is not proposed 
to follow this system throughout its deleterious effects upon 
the morals of private citizens. But if it is capable of cor- 
rupting publick officers, or government itself, a remark to 
exhibit its superior malignity over the aristocracies of the 
first and second ages, cannot be suppressed. The manners 
and principles of government, are objects of imitation, and 
influence national character. The aristocracy of the first 
age, exhibited sanctity, veneration for the Gods, and moral 



4-3 ARISTOCRACY. 

virtues, to the publiek view; not unusefulin theip operation,, 
and particularly so in times of Ignorance ; that of the se- 
cond, the virtues of generosity, honour and bravery, not 
miuseful in softening barbarism into civilization, by the 
magnanimity and even the folly of chivalry : but what vir- 
tues for imitation appear in the aristocracy of the present 
age ? Avarice and ambition being its whole soul, what pri- 
vate morals will it infuse, and what national character 
will it create 2 It subsists by usurpation, deceit and oppres- 
sion, A consciousness of fraud, impels it towards perpetra- 
tion. By ever affecting, and never practising sincerity, it 
teaches a perpetual fear of treachery, and a perpetual effort 
to insnare. Its end is distrust and fraud, which convert the 
earth into a scene of ambuscade, man against man. Its 
acquisitions inflict misery, without bestowing happiness ; 
because they can only feed a rapacity which can never be 
satisfied, and a luxury which cannot suppress remorse. 
In relation to private people, this system may only encour- 
age idleness, teach swindling, ruin individuals, and destroy 
morals : but allied to a government, it presents a policy of 
such unrivalled malignity, as only to be expressed by say- 
ing, " the government is a speculator upon the liberty and 
property of the nation." 

A pamphlet written by Doctor Johnson, to disprove the 
principles which produced the independence of America, 
comprises in its title, " taxation no slavery," the whole ar- 
gument to which the system of paper and patronage, finally 
flees for refuge. Taxation is not liberty. But the distinc- 
tion is obvious. It lies plainly between taxes imposed for 
the benefit of a nation, or for the benefit of a minority | be- 
tween those designed to defend, or to enslave. Taxation to 
enrich a minority or aristocracy, is robbery ; to endow it 
gradually with power, treason. 

It is strange, that it is so difficult to distinguish between 
honest and fraudulent taxes, imposed by a minor interest on 
the publiek interest^ and so easy to discern the real design 
if taxes imposed hy one nation upon another* In the latter 



A&ISTOCRACY. 49 

sase, monopoly is clearly understood to be an indirect mode 
of taxation. The United States know, that the monopoly 
of their commerce by the English, was a tribute ; but they 
refuse to know* that the monopoly of a circulating medium 
by banking, is also a tribute. Useless offices, established 
here by the English government, were clearly perceived to 
be a tribute % but useless offices established by our own go- 
vernment are denied to be so. Pretexts for taxation invent- 
ed by England, were detected by dullness herself; but pre- 
texts invented at home, seem to deceive the keenest pene= 
tration. 

And yet correct reasoning must conclude, that if one 
nation, by means of a monopoly, can impoverish another ; 
a combination or corporate body, may also impoverish the 
rest of a nation, hy the same means. That a monopoly 
which enriches, will correspondent^ impoverish, unless if 
produces or creates ; that if Britain possessed the privilege 
of furnishing America with bank paper, at the annual profit 
of eight per centum, it would have constituted a tax, en- 
riching Britain and impoverishing America — co-extensively 
with her former commercial monopoly ; that if this privi- 
lege would have enriched the English at our expense, it 
must also equally enrich stockholders, at the expense of 
those who are not stockholders ; that if national indigence 
is gradually produced by a subjection to a foreign monopoly* 
the indigence of the mass of a nation, will be produced by a 
domestiek monopoly, profitable, but unproductive; and that, 
if a nation has a moral right to liberate itself from an indi- 
rect tribute to another nation, it has also a moral right to 
liberate itself from a similar tribute to a domestiek combi- 
nation ; unless it is a moral duty heroically to withstand 
evils imposed by foreigners, for the purpose of penitentially 
embracing them when imposed by natives. If these effects 
of the contemplated monopoly are true, they terminate 
inevitably in the aristocracy of the third age. 

Doctor Johnson's maxim could never convince us, that 
taxation by banking, funding systems, protecting duties or 

S 



50. ARISTGCB.ACY. 

patronage, was no slavery, if the profits arising from such 
institutions were received by English capitalists : does the 
substitution of a different receiver, alter the case ? If not, 
<6 taxation" is " slavery," however moderate the tax may 
be, when the object of the tax is not the publiek benefit, but 
to enrich and impoverish individuals, and thereby under- 
mine the principles necessary to preserve national liberty. 

As to oppressive taxation, there are few cases capable 
of justifying it; and none, those excepted, wherein it repels 
a greater evil than itself. Admit that it expels tyranny ; 
it is itself a tyrant. Admit that tyranny will obliterate mo- 
ral virtues, and replenish the mind with vices ; oppressive 
taxation will do it also. A nation oppressed by taxes, can 
never be generous, benevolent or enlightened. If the lion 
was burdened like the ass, he would presently become cow- 
ardly, and stupid. But oppressive taxation, by law and 
monopoly, direct and indirect, to create or sustain the sys- 
tem of paper and patronage, proposes nothing retributory 
for reducing a people to the condition of asses, except an 
aristocracy to provide for them a succession of burdens. 

Hereditary aristocracy, supported by perpetuities, is 
preferable to a paper and patronage aristocracy, because 
its taxation would be less oppressive, since its landed estate 
would furnish it with opulence and power ; whereas eternal 
and oppressive taxation is necessary to supply the aristo- 
cracy of paper and patronage, with these vital qualities. 

As a government is melted by law, into the aristocracy 
of the third age, the ligaments which united it w ith the na- 
tion, are gradually broken ; and a consciousness of this, 
gradually drives the government, for defending itself against 
the people, into war, armies, corruption, debt, charters, 
bounties, and every species of patronage for which a pre- 
text can be invented $ and a sinking fund cloaks its drift, as 
proclamations did that of Lewis the fourteenth, declaring, 
previously to his inundating Europe with Christian blood* 
his anxiety to prevent its effusion. 



ARISTOCRACY. H 

When this process is managed by a government, it 
proves that the government is welded to that interest which 
the process advances ; it substantially destroys the English 
theory ; divides a nation into two interests, and cooks one 
in the modes most delicious to the appetite of the other. 
Such is the essential evil of every species of bad govern- 
ment, by whatever name distinguished. A particular inte- 
rest thus quartered upon the general interest, has never 
failed to harrass a nation : a government is good, when it 
is coupled to the general interest ; and bad, when it is cou- 
pled to a particular interest of any kind, whether military* 
hierarchical, feudal, or stock. 

It is ad mitted by Mr. Adams, that an order of men hav- 
ing great wealth, will aequire a correspondent degree of 
power. If this wealth consists of land, it may be measured 
and balanced. Suppose a nation should establish a landed 
nobility, and should conclude that the possession of one 
third of the lands, would confer a share of wealth on this 
order so unequal, as to make it unmanageable, and of course 
despotick ; this nation might restrict their landed order to 
one fourth of all the lands in the state, concluding that the 
three fourths divided among all other orders, might suffice 
to check the power arising from condensing one fourth in 
one interest. This is what Iiord Shaftsbury means by « a 
balance of property." But if an order of paper and patron- 
age is erected, (remember that nothing makes an order but 
one interest.) in what manner is its power to be checked by 
a balance of property ? The wealth of paper and patronage 
is daily growing, wherefore it cannot be measured or limit- 
ed ; it is therefore impossible to balance it ; and yet without 
this balance of property, the power which clings to wealth, 
will destroy liberty, even in the opinion of the English the- 
orists. According to Mr. Adams's principles, this syllo- 
gism presents itself. Exorbitant wealth will obtain a degree 
of power dangerous to society, if not checked or balanced ; 
paper systems will bestow exorbitant wealth, to check or 



52 ARISTOCRACY. 

balance which, no means have been invented; therefore, 
paper systems are dangerous to society. 

Not land, but its profit, constitutes wealth and power. 
By taxation, the profit arising from land maybe apportion- 
ed between the possession, and the system of paper and 
patronage ; or it may be wholly transferred to the system. 
If then an order, such as the late nobility and clergy of 
France, by an income consisting of the profit of one third of 
the lands of France, attracted a degree of power oppressive 
to the nation ; does it not evidently follow, whenever the 
system of paper and patronage, has acquired one third of 
(the profit produced by all the lands of a nation, that it will 
also acquire the oppressive degree of power, interwoven 
with that degree of wealth ? 

Although I am considering this system in relation to 
Britain, an ignorance of any rule by which to compute the 
profit of all the land of that island, compels me to refer to 
America for an illustration of the last observation. 

All the exports from the United States, may probably 
amount to the whole profit yielded by land, allowing subsist- 
ence to the possessors, which forms no part of rent or pro- 
fit. This amount has never extended to sixty millions of 
dollars annually, yet for the purpose of including the whole, 
we will estimate the annual profit of land at that sum. If 
the interest of paper and patronage received twelve milli- 
ons annually from direct taxation, and eight millions annu- 
ally from indirect, hy bounties and the circulation of bank 
paper, then this system would possess that degree of wealth,, 
which rendered the former civil and religious nobility of 
France, dangerous and oppressive ; and it would be obvious? 
that a system, which had so rapidly absorbed one third of 
the profit of the land in the United States, possessed a capa- 
city of extending that third to a moiety, or even beyond a 
moiety, as in England ; and that as no mode of collecting a 
dangerous degree of wealth into one interest, with equal 
rapidity, had ever yet appeared, there is none so alarming 
to a nation, or which so loudly demanded the application of 



ARISTOCRACY. 52 

Mr. Adams's or Lord Shaftsbury's idea of a balance of 
property. 

To display the celerity with which this system collects 
wealth, and changes forms of government, it is only neces- 
sary to recollect, that the mode of monopolizing wealth by 
conquest, required above six hundred years to destroy the 
Roman Republick ; whereas the system of paper and patron- 
age, by changing the nature of the English government in 
less than a century, has verified the savage opinion, that 
certain conjurers by hieroglyph! cal representations, could 
take away life ; it transfers property and kills governments 
by a like graphical art. It paints as many pounds or dol- 
lars upon paper as it pleases, which transfers money and 
power from the holders of land and industry, to the holders 
of the paper. Let casuists decide between the morality of 
taking away life in the mode of the Indian conjurer* and ta- 
king away property and liberty in the mode of the paper 
conjurer. 

Is it on account of this sorcery, that the aristocracy of 
the third age considers painting as one of the fine arts, and 
devotes its whole philosophy to a taste for this species of it ? 
The aristocracies of superstition and ennobled orders, by 
cultivating the circle of the sciences, checked their passions, 
and humanized their rule ; this cultivates a science to take 
away the property of its friends, like that used by a savage 
to take away the life of his foe. The savage passion of 
vengeance is however appeased, by the death of the father, 
and thirsts not for the blood of the son 5 but the passion 
which seeks property by hieroglyphieal representation, is 
never appeased, and what it takes from one generation, on- 
ly whets its malignity towards the next. Is this sorcery re- 
ally preferable to the ancient modes of aristocracy ? 

It is universally agreed that power is attracted by wealth. 
Ten hundred millions of pounds sterling, being a great sum 
of wealth, must therefore attract some share of power to 
the paper interest of England. "Whatever it attracts was 
not bestowed by the English form of government, and is of 



54 ARI9T0CRACV. 

course an unconstitutional and revolutionary acquisition. 
This must be admitted, or it must be proved, that great 
wealth acquired by a particular interest, does not attract 
power. If the system of paper and patronage, will destroy 
the principles of limited monarchy without changing its 
forms, either by amalgamating king, lords and commons, 
or by creating a new power, may it not also destroy the 
principles of a republican government, and leave its form 
Also standing ? 

United interests, or an aggregation of wealth by one in- 
terest, are equally at enmity with Mr. Adams's system of a 
balance of power and property ; and if the system of paper 
and patronage produces both or either, his cannot exist a 
moment in communion with that. An unconquerable enmi- 
ty in theory and principle, would crown an attempt to fos- 
ter both these systems, with several ludicrous inconsisten- 
cies. Mr. Adams's system requires an illustrious, high- 
spirited, enlightened, virtuous and wealthy house of Lords; 
*n<l the system of paper and patronage would fill it with the 
^pawn of stockjobbing and corruption. How long will it 
require to purge off the contaminations of the father before 
the son will be well born ? Or will not the system of paper 
and patronage recontaminate faster, than the generative 
process can purify, so as to prevent Mr. Adams from ever 
yolleeting the necessary qualities in his noble senate ? With- 
out superior qualities, his system does not contend for su- 
perior distinction; but it is notorious that the system of pa- 
per and patronage peoples the two houses of parliament in 
England, and so completely moulds their character, that all 
sorts of men, make the same sort of lords and commons*. 

We may conceive the manner in which the aristocracy 
of the third age is consolidated with a government, by sup- 
posing the territory to be represented by a multitude of land- 
scapes, which the government could transfer with the lands 
they represented, just as it transfers wealth by pictures of 
money. Would not the individuals who administered the 
government, take to themselves some of these landscapes ? 



-iJftlSTOCllACi. 5S 

Would they not purchase accomplices and protectors with 
others ? and would not this unjust mode of taking away 
lands, presently generate a centre of power and interest, in- 
finitely more oppressive than Turgot's centre, so justly cen- 
sured by Mr. Adams ? 

If the system of paper and patronage has made any im- 
pression upon the English theory, it behoved Mr. Adaim 
accurately to have explained this impression, before lie made 
use of that theory in his defence of the American constitu- 
tions. Without this explanation, we are at a loss to know 
whether the object of his reference and admiration is the 
aucient theory or modern practice : Whether it is the king, 
lords and commons of the fourteenth or of the eighteenth 
century. 

Had this explanation appeared, his arguments would 
have been better understood, and the practicability of his 
system more easily estimated ; nor could he possibly have 
escaped some coincidence of opinion with the principles of 
this essay, except by proving that the system of paper and 
patronage had made no impression on the English theory. 
Otherwise, by applauding the old theory, he must have co^ 
incided in a disapprobation of the new system of paper and 
patronage, because it corrupts this old theory ; or if he ap- 
plauded the new system, he must have condemned the old 
theory destroyed by it. He could not have justified the new 
system of paper and patronage, without surrendering his 
idea of checks and balances, or discovering checks and ba- 
lances in this new system. 

The checks and balances of the old English theory and 
the new English system, seem to have little or no relation 
to each other. The former consisted of king, lords and 
commons. The two first were weights, by reason of do- 
mains, manors, prerogatives and tenures ; the last, from the 
confidence of the people attracted by responsibility. These 
weights or checks and balances, no longer exist. Bidder* 
for loans and dealers in omnium, constitute the most pon- 
derous weight next to the king, and the vibrations (if stock 



3b ARISTOCRACY* 

possess tea ibid the power of the house of lords. The 
nearest approach towards the idea of checks and balances 
made by the invention of paper and patronage, is by divi- 
ding a nation into two weights, one consisting of the gov- 
ernment, stockjobbers and office holders ; the other of the 
people. It places pecuniary voraciousness in one scale, and 
Promethean patience in the other ; and with these weights, 
produces a political system, as wide from one founded in a 
balance among kings, lords and commons, according to Mr. 
Adams's explanation of it, as can be imagined. 

Without discriminating between the English theory, 
anattended by the system of paper and patronage, or influ- 
enced by it, Mr. Adams arranges the Roman, Lacedemo- 
Ulan, and other governments, in the class of mixed forms, 
together with the English ; as being of a similar nature, 
and yielding similar inferences. If from this alliance, we 
are compelled for the sake of maintaining the consistency 
of Mr. Adams's arguments, to consider him as referring to 
the old English theory, the old practice, and the old balances, 
it follows, that his whole political system is built with ma- 
terials which have vanished ; and that it is as imaginary 
and romantick gravely to talk of patricians, plebeians, and 
feudal barons at this day, as It would be to propose the 
restoration of oracles, or the revival of chivalry. 

To bring this argument within the full view of the rea- 
der, was one design for devoting so much time to the ex- 
planation of the new English syetem of paper and patronage $ 
because, if it is proved, that this has made a material im- 
pression upon the balances of the old theory, it follows, that 
the English form of government has undergone a revolu- 
tion 5 that the new system of paper and patronage, corrupts 
and destroys the old system of cheeks and balances ; that if 
the American forms of government are, as Mr. xldams 
asserts, founded in the old theory of checks and balances, 
they are exposed to destruction by this new foe, which has 
evinced its power over that old theory, by undermining it 
in England; that Mr. Adams V argument is eminently 



AKIST0CRAC1. &7 

defective, in having overlooked the destroyer of his favour- 
ite theory of checks and balances ; and that this new enemy 
to human liberty must be met by some other form of govern- 
ment ; that composed of checks and balances modified 
according to the old theory, having become its victim, after 
a feeble resistance. 

To prove that the new English practice is inconsistent 
with the old English theory, let us consider the declaration 
of Mr. Adams, " that among the ancient forms of govern- 
ment, the Lacedemonian approached nearest to the Eng- 
lish," wherefore he bestows on it particular commenda- 
tions. Our evidence results from a comparison between 
the present English form of government and the Lacede- 
monian. 

By one, money was despised ; of the other, it is the God. 
One inspired heroism ; the other avarice. One taught no- 
bles to fight for their country ; the other, to become the 
sycophants of a king. In one, the legislature controlled 
two kings ; in the other, one king corrupts two legislative 
bodies. One inspired a love of country ; the other, a deri- 
sion of patriotism* One taught frugality and temperance ; 
the other, profusion and luxury. In short, one disclosed 
the few virtues natural to the aristocracies of the first and 
second ages ; the other, all the vices natnral to the aristo- 
cracy of the third. 

That forms of government mould manners, will not be 
denied; and as the manners of the Spartans and the modern 
English, bear no similarity to each other, it follows that 
the principles of their governments were also essentially dif- 
ferent. To assert, that the principles were the same, but 
the effects different, would destroy the only solid ground of 
reasoning, namely, that similar causes will produce similar 
effects i and deprive us of the entire motive for a prefer- 
ence between forms of government. 

If this difference exists, between the principles and man- 
ners of the Spartans and the modern English, the resem- 
blance between the English and Spartan governments seen 

9 



53 ARISTOCRACY* 

by Mr. Adams, must have arisen from a comparison of the 
Spartan, not with the present English government, hecause 
between these there is no resemblance, but with that which 
was compounded of an hierarchy rendered powerful by su- 
perstition, of an honest legislature, and of a frugal, warlike 
and hardy nobility, able to control and punish kings. 

By classing the English with the Spartan, and other 
mixed forms of government, it is obvious that Mr. Adams, 
throughout his book, has only considered that era of the 
English government, in which its form had some resem- 
blance to the ancient governments with which he compares 
It ; and that he has wholly omitted to consider the present 
English aristocracy of paper and patronage, or the present 
English government ; since that, neither in its causes or 
effects, has any resemblance to a single ancient form of 
government, from which Mr. Adams has drawn his illus- 
trations. 

Throughout his system, Mr. Adams deduces his aristo- 
cracy from oracles, a supposed descent from the Gods, or 
a superiority of virtue and talents ; and his essential effort 
is to ascertain the best mode of checking it. These are the 
aristocracies of the first and second ages ; and if his mode 
of checking them is well contrived, it might have been use- 
ful to Lyeurgus and Solon, to the Italian republicks, and to 
nations of the ancient and middle ages. But would it there- 
fore follow, that the same cheek or balance will secure the 
liberty of nations against the modern mode of invading it 
"Will his system check corruption, restrain patronage, con- 
trol armies, and limit the draughts of avarice upon national 
wealth and labour ? Behold England, if his system exists 
there, and answer the question. If it does not exist there* 
it follows, that Mr, Adams's system is irrelative to the 
existing ease, or to the subject which he professed to consi- 
der, and which I profess to consider ; namely, the nature? 
of the 'existing American and English forms of government. 
In drawing his comparison, Mr. Adams refers to a landed 
aristocracy; I refer to an aristocracy of paper and patron- 



ARISTOCKACY. 59 

age. Let us endeavour to discover which of us is fencing 
with a shadow. 

Perhaps the discovery may be made by the following 
questions. Would a dissertation upon the system of paper 
and patronage, have explained Mr. Adams's system of 
checks and balances to the people of Greece ? If not, can a 
dissertation upon checks and balances, explain the effects 
of a system of paper and patronage to the present age ? 
Suppose an author in the fifteenth century, had proved the 
system of paper and patronage to be right* and inferred* 
that the feudal aristocracy, or the then existing English 
government, was therefore the best in the world ; would it 
not have been precisely analogous to an inference, that the 
now existing English government, under the system of pa- 
per and patronage, is also proved to be the best form in the 
world, by proving the feudal system of the fifteenth centu- 
rv to have bam so? In fact, we all see a distinction between 
the English governments of the fifteenth and the'eighteenth 
centuries : where does it lie, except between the systems of 
checks and balances, and of paper and patronage ? One is 
the feudal, the other the monied aristocracy. For which 
does Mr. Adams contend ? It would be a whimsical event, 
if the landed interest of the United States, should be induc- 
ed by Mr. Adams's compliments to the landed aristocracy 
of the second age, to erect the paper aristocracy of the 
third. That hy being convinced of its own natural right to 
be a master, it should be induced to become a slave. And 
that the praises bestowed on its own virtues, should make 
it blind to the vices of corruption and avarice, nourished hr 
the aristocracy of paper and patronage. Will it be just to 
punish a wish to erect a landed aristocracy, by making the 
landed interest a dupe and a victim ? If so, Mr. Adams's 
dissertation may have the merit of an avenger. For it will 
hereafter be shewn, that the English system, though it is 
able to introduce into the United States, the aristocracy of 
paper and patronage, is unable to introduce a landed arisio- 
©racy | and that the landed interest has no alternative. 



oO ARISTOCRACY. 

under our circumstances, but that of supporting an equal, 
free government, or becoming a slave to the system of paper 
and patronage. Where indeed could we find an interest, 
for the landed interest of the United States to mount in the 
form of an aristocracy ? 

Not less whimsical would it be, if the system of paper 
and patronage, which has substantially destroyed a landed 
aristocracy in England, should create one here i particu- 
larly if our form of government (as Mr. Adams believes) is 
similar to the English, which has proved either a feeble 
foe or a convenient instrument to a monied aristocracy. 

Hereafter, when our constitution is considered, the com- 
petency of its security against the aristocracy of paper and 
patronage, or that of the present age, will be computed ; 
and then it is not meant to shrink from the consideration of 
this species of aristocracy,' in reference to the United 
States ; on the contrary, an effort will be made to place it in 
several points of view, inadmissible, whilst considering it 
»n relation to England. 

At present, supposing that the paper and patronage 
system of England, is a modern political power of vast 
force ; that it has corrupted or supplanted the old English 
form of government ; that its oppressions overspread the 
land ; that its principles are vicious, and its designs fraudu- 
lent ; we will proceed to inquire what ought to be clone. 

Superstition and noble orders were defended by the 
strongest sanctions within the scope of human invention. 
Penalties, temporal and eternal ; splendour, pomp and ho- 
nour i united to terrify, to dazzle, to awe and to flatter the 
human mind : and the real or external virtues of charity 
and meekness, hospitality and nobleness of mind, induced 
some to love that, which most hated, and all feared. Yet 
the intellect of the last age pierced through the delusions, 
behind which the oppressions of hierarchy and nobility had 
taken shelter. 

We pity the ancients for their dullness in (discovering 
oppressions, so clearly seen by ourselves now 't}mt they are 



AHisTbckicy. 01 

exploded. We moderns ; we enlightened American's ; we 
who have abolished hierarchy and title ; and we who are 
submitting to be taxed and enslaved by patronage and paper? 
without being deluded or terrified by the promise of heaven, 
the denunciation of hell, the penalties of law 9 the brilliancy 
and generosity of nobility, or the pageantry and charity of 
superstition. 

A spell is put upon our understandings by the words 
"publick faith and national credit, 95 which fascinates us 
into an opinion, that fraud, corruption and oppression, con- 
stitute national credit j and debt and slavery, publick faith- 
This delusion of the aristocracy of the present age, is not 
less apparent, than the ancient divinity of kings, and jet it 
required the labours of Locke and Sidney to detect thai 
ridiculous imposture. 

Publick faith is made with great solemnity to mount 
the rostrum, and to pronounce the following lecture : 

" Law enacted for the benefit of a nation, is repealable ; 
" but law enacted for the benefit of individuals, though ©p- 
" pressive to a nation, is a charter, and irrepealable. The 
" existing generation is under the tutelage of all past gene- 
's rations, and must rely upon the responsibility of the grave 
" for the preservation of its liberty. Posterity, being bound 
« by the contracts of its ancestry, in every case which di- 
" minishes its rights, man is daily growing less free hj a 
" doctrine which never increases them. A government 
16 intrusted with the administration of publick affairs for 
" the good of a nation, has a right to deed away that nation 
<* for the good of itself or its partisans, by law charters for 
** monopolies or sinecures ; and posterity is bound by these 
" deeds. But although an existing generation can never 
" reassume the liberty or property held by its ancestor, it 
« may reeompenee itself by abridging or abolishing the 
" rights of its descendant.' 5 

Such is the doctrine which has prevented the eye of in- 
vestigation from penetrating the recesses of tlie aristocracy 
of the present age. It simply offers the consolation of 



)2 ARISTOCRACY, 

softening injuries to ourselves by adding to the wretched- 
ness of our descendants. By this artifice, (the offspring of 
interest and cunning,) whenever men cut off their shackles 
with the sword, they are riveted on again by the pen. A 
successful war, to avenge a small and temporary injury, is 
made to gain a great and lasting calamity. Victory over 
anemies is followed by defeat from friends. And an enemy 
destroyed abroad, is only the head of an hydra, which pro- 
duces two at home. This is not exaggeration, if the idea 
of the aristocracy of paper and patronage is not chimerical. 
And thence occur these curious questions : Can the United 
States kill one Englishman or Frenchman, without convert- 
ing two at least of their own citizens, into members of this 
aristocracy ? Which would be most dangerous and burden- 
aome to the union, one of these foreigners abroad, or two of 
these aristocrats at home ? 

The best argument in favour of the mortgage of a nation 
to a faction, is, that it is a purchase ; an argument howe- 
ver, which does not extend to the family of law charters in 
general. A few of a nation, have bought the nation. Csesar 
hj plunder and rapine, amassed the means of buying or 
corrupting the Roman government ; was his title to despo- 
tism over the Roman people therefore sound ? If Jugurtha 
had been rich enough to buy Rome, ought the nation to 
have submitted to the sale, because the bargain was made 
with the government ? If a freeman has no right to enslave 
his child by selling him, can one generation sell another ? 
And if one generation has no right to sell another, can a 
government which exercises the double character of seller 
and buyer, in erecting the aristocracy of the present age, 
transform the most atrocious iniquity into political or moral 
rectitude, by writing in its forehead " publick faith V 9 Then 
let us acquit every thief, who assumes for his motto the 
words « honest man." 

'This kind of faith and honesty, have invented the opi- 
nion 6i that policy and justice require a law, beneficial to 
i& individuals at the expense of a nation, to exist for the 



ARISTOCRACY. SB 

*« period prescribed ;" to sustain which, it is necessary to 
reverse the elemental political maxim " that the good of 
« the whole, ought to be preferred to the good of a few." 
Government is erected for the purpose of carrying this 
maxim into execution, by passing laws for the benefit of a 
nation ; and shall a violation of the purpose of its institu- 
tion, bypassing laws injurious to a nation, in creating or 
fostering the aristocracy of paper and patronage? be cleans- 
ed of its guiltiness, because individuals have become the 
accomplices of the government ? 

A law or a contract, prescribing an immoral action, is 
void. No sanction can justify murder, perjury or theft. 
Yet the murder of national liberty, the perjury of a traitor- 
ous government, and the theft of national wealth, by the 
gradual introduction of the aristocracy of the third age? are 
varnished into a gloss by a cunning dogma, capable even of 
dazzling men, so excessively honest as to put other men to 
death for petty thefts, committed to appease hunger or cover 
nakedness. 

The same mouth will solemnly assert, that the princi- 
ples of equity annul every contract, which defrauds an indi- 
vidual ; and that justice or policy requires a catalogue of 
law charters which defraud a nation, to exist and have their 
effect. 

This is owing to the artful conversion of good words, 
into knavish dogmas. It is not new, to see errour take re- 
fuge under the garb of truth. Superstition has in all ages 
called itself religion. Thus law charters, with the faith- 
less design of enslaving a nation by the introduction of the 
aristocracy of the present age, crouch behind the good and 
honest words " publick faith and national credit," to pre- 
vent a nation from destroying that, which is destroying it. 
And they succeed ; because we are as unsuspicious that a 
false and fraudulent dogma, is hidden under fair language, 
as that a well dressed gentleman indicates a thief. 

To come at truth, we ought not to stop at a verbal in- 
vestigation. We must consider' whether the effects of every 



jaw and every measure* by whatever names the law or 
measure are called, are oa the side of virtue or vice. 

An irrepealahle law charter is a standing temptation to 
governments to do evil, and an invitation to individuals to 
become their accessaries! by its help, a predominant party 
may use temporary power, to enact corporate or individual 
emoluments for itself, at the national expense. Successive 
parties will repeat the same iniquity ; and even the outs or 
opposition will be corrupted, to do obeisance at the shrine 
of the dogma, that they also may reap of the fruit it be- 
stows, when a nation shall fall into their hands ; which up- 
on every -change of administration, will have its hopes of 
reform gratified, by new pillages under the sanctions of 
publick faith and national credit. 

This modern system of law charters, is founded in the 
same design, with the ancient system of a social compact. 
Under the sanction of social compact, governments have 
formerly tyrannised over nations. Under the sanction of 
law charters, governments now buy a faction, rob nations 
of enormous wealth, and soar beyond responsibility. The 
inviolability of a social compact was the old dogma ; the 
inviolability of law charters is the new : for effecting the 
same end. The last is however an engine in the hands of 
avarice and ambition, of power far superior to the first. 
It is able to corrupt and pillage a nation without limit. The 
first was an opinion unable to purchase partisans $ the last 
offers every thing to its disciples, which can gratify perni- 
cious passions, and meets arguments with bribes. Thus a 
nation, which won self-government by exploding the doc- 
trine of the antiquated compact dogma, may lose it again in 
the modern law charter dogma ; and thus a nation, which 
thought it morally wrong to suffer slavery from troops hired 
by clothes, pay and rations, may be persuaded that it is 
morally right to suffer slavery from troops hired by divi- 
dends, interest upon stock* and protecting duty bounties. 

As the English began to emerge from Gothic igne- 
ranee, the Idea of liberty by compact, and not of natural 



ARISTOCRACY. 6£ 

right, led them to extort charters from their princes ; but 
wofully is the doctrine of deriving a right to liberty from 
charters, turned upon this gallant nation. By allowing 
them to bestow, it was discovered that they could destroy, 
Such as diminish, and not those which enlarge national 
freedom, have become the sacred charters. The errour of 
parchment liberty, has made liberty the creature of parch- 
ment. A government, good or bad, can easily take away 
that liberty by charters, which was created by charters. 
Before the idea of deriving liberty from charter or compact 
became fashionable, the evils produced by bad govern- 
ments were temporary; now, slavery, as liberty condescend- 
ed to be, is created by charters, so as to perpetuate these 
evils, and to hem in the efforts of patriotism so narrowly* as 
to destroy the effect of virtue in office. 

By admitting that donations of pub-lick property by a 
government to individuals, should irrevocably transform it 
into private property, it is obvious that the stock of publick 
rights will be continually whittled away. Tyranny is only 
a partial disposition of publick rights, in favour of one or a 
few. The system of paper and patronage, bottomed upon 
charters and commissions, enables avarice and ambition to 
draw more extensively upon the national stock, than any 
system hitherto invented. It can convert publick property 
into private, with unexampled rapidity, or transfer wealth 
and power from the mass of a nation to a few. Its guilt is 
made its sanction. Neither "private nor publick property" 
is allowed to be a sanction against the frauds and invasions 
of paper and patronage, until the fraud or invasion is com- 
mitted ; and then « private property" (good words, as are 
** publick faith and national credit") is converted into a 
dogma for the protection of this fraud and invasion. Titles, 
tythes, feudal services, monasteries, South Sea and Missis- 
sippi projects, funding and banking systems, sinecure offices, 
and qycvj species of fraud, monopoly and usurpation, call 
the pillages of private property, private property, and gene- 
rally contrive to make it so by laws or armies. 

10 



dm ARISTOCRACY, 

But in the eye of justice, property, publick or private^ 
cannot be transferred by fraud. A nation erects a govern- 
ment for the publick benefit, and does not empower it to 
bring about the aggrandisement of itself, and its faction, to 
the publick detriment. If this is effected by a transfer of 
property, publick or private, the transfer is fraudulent, and 
void ; because the nation never empowered the government, 
by that or any other mode, to injure its liberty or happiness. 
The principles of moral rectitude, do not forbid a nation to 
resume power, usurped by a government ; nor property, 
chartered away to individuals, by fraudulent laws ; because 
otherwise they could not resume just rights, since power and 
"law are the vehicles in which these rights are constantly 
taken away. 

The ideas annexed to the words " publick faith, nation- 
al credit and private property" in England, may be correct 
in reference to the English civil policy, and erroneous in 
relation to the civil policy of the United States. Monopoly 
is the leading principle of their political, religious, and mer- 
cantile systems $ every thing the reverse of monopoly, con- 
stitutes our political, religious and mercantile systems. The 
king, with his annual million, his prerogatives, and his pat- 
ronage, made up of fleets, armies, offices, and corruption: 
a house of inheritable legislation, without responsibility, 
entrenched behind the crown, and flanked with privileges ; a 
house of commons, purchasers of diplomas bestowing an 
exclusive power to tax and to receive ; a hierarchy, tythe 
gatherers and test makers ; mercantile corporations, mas- 
ters of kingdoms and islands ; a bank of England, which 
can make it unlawful to pay its own debts $ a funding sys- 
tem, mortgaging the nation for more money than the world 
possesses^ a multitude of places obsolete, except as to fees 
and salaries,' and a variety of rights and privileges, exer- 
cised by corporations, trades, companies and districts— form 
a vast mass of monopoly, which in a multitude of ways in- 
corporates with itself the talents and power of the nation., 
and has therefore annexed ideas to the words « publick 



ARISTOCRACY* 6^ 

faith, national credit and private property" adapted to 
nourish and not destroy itself. 

If the English ideas of these expressions, have heen in- 
culcated by the most complicated and wide spreading system 
of monopoly which has ever existed ; and if this system 
would not have inculcated such ideas, had they been un- 
friendly to its ambition and avarice ; it follows, that their 
construction of these expressions being suggested by and 
friendly to a system of monopoly and aristocracy, must be 
unfriendly to a system, at enmity with monopoly and aris- 
tocracy. 

Fraud and ambition can never succeed, except by sub 
tilty. Hence they seize upon our virtues by plausible phra- 
ses, and manage nations by prejudices they themselves 
plant. By these phrases and prejudices they rear and nur- 
ture a multitude of opinions, which concur in advancing 
their designs and interest. Could fraud and ambition be 
compelled to substitute sincerity in the plact of this subtil- 
ty 9 they would acknowledge that the invariable result of 
their doctrines, is, the sacrifice of a nation to the ambition 
and avarice of a few i but an acknowledgment of this end, 
would explode all their arguments, however specious ; and 
repeal all their laws, however sanctioned. It is the felicity 
of the United States, to commence a government at a period, 
when the aristocracies of the first, the second, and the third 
ages, have all sincerely and unequivocally displayed their 
end and purpose, by effects. The purpose of the ideas an- 
nexed in England, to the words "publick faith," "national 
credit" and " charter" is displayed in the state of the peo 
pie ; this, and not the brilliancy of the government or the 
splendour of individuals, is the object which an honest poli- 
tician will contemplate. ' The wealth found by Khouli Khan 
in Delhi, and the riches collected by Nabobs, were no proofY 
of the happiness of Hindostan, or the goodness of iis govern 
ment. 

Nations, by false dogmas, have been restrained from de- 
fending their liberties, a&d armies have paid taeir \h rfor 



68 ARISTOCRACY. 

their prejudices. The sacred nature of law charters, is the 
sword of their enemies at the throats of the bigotted Israel- 
ites on their sabbath day a They are extended to periods, 
within which the grantees may acquire so much wealth, and 
corrupt such a proportion of talents, as to secure a continu- 
ance. The question is, shall the nation destroy charters, 
or charters destroy the nation ? The dogma declares char- 
ters to be sacred, and forbids the nation to resist until thev 
have acquired an irresistible maturity. Even the Jews, ob- 
stinate as they were, at length discovered fighting on the 
sabbath day to be preferable to death ; but the enlightened 
nations of Europe, who laugh at their sabbatism, piously 
relieve, that there is a charm in the words charter, credit 
and publick faith ; making slavery preferable to a fair and 
free government. 

A gradual monopoly of lands and wealth, overturned the 
Hainan Republick. By assailing it in time, it might have 
been suppressed. The murder of the Gracchi is a proof? 
that usurpation can only be corrected in its infancy, and 
that fraudulent acquisitions will perpetrate any crime for 
self-defence. But this system of monopoly was suffered to 
proceed to maturity, and the commonwealth was poisoned 
hy the miasma it diffused,, It was a consequence of the Ro 
man conquests which avenged the injured nations; but do 
the Americans equally merit the vengeance of the English 
system of paper and patronage, for having vindicated their 
liberty against it ? 

The idea annexed by this system of monopoly to private 
property, requires a nation to sacrifice itself for the benefi t 
of an individual. This is a new principle of moral recti- 
tude, which fraud only could suggest, and folly alone adopt. 
Heretofore, individuals who sacrificed themselves for a na- 
tion, have been celebrated as performing an act of herpick 
virtue. Heretofore, a suppression of personal appetites, 
for the sake of advancing public good, has been thought a 
species of morality, highly meritorious; and a dtestrtu 
of publick . good, to gratify personal appetites, a speck 



immorality, highly vicious. Place in on** seale publiek li- 
berty and happiness $ in the other* the gratifications of indi- 
viduals by the system of paper and patronage, with the la- 
bel " private property'- fixed upon these gratifications : mo- 
rality, it is agreed, ought only to determine which scale 
should preponderate. Will she too be the dupe of a frau- 
dulent dogma, and a treacherous badge ? Will she too de- 
vote a nation to oppression and misery, to feed the lusts of 
individuals, under the influence of a superstitious sanction ? 
A crocodile has been worshipped, and its priesthood have as- 
serted, that morality required the people to suffer them- 
selves to be eaten by the crocodile 5 to encourage them, the 
people might also have been told, that the crocodile would 
die in time, and that then, they would be no longer eaten. 
In this species of morality the people believed, and whene- 
ver the old crocodile was about to expire, a young one was 
put in his place, and the people continued to be eaten, Law 
charters are a family of those crocodiles, 

Publiek faith is the moral principle, called upon to de- 
fend monopoly and law charter, under the name of private 
property. Let us consider what this sanction is in a free 
government. If the government should solemnly, by law y 
enter into a contract with a number of individuals, the ob- 
ject of which was to diminish the liberty and wealth of the 
people, by increasing the power and wealth of the govern- 
ment and these individuals, does publiek faith require from 
the nation a fulfilment of this contract ? If the question is 
answered in the negative, a correct definition of publiek 
faith, must comprise both a faithfulness to the publiek good, 
and also* a faithfulness in contracts with individuals ; nor 
can these two duties be made inconsistent with each other 
by publiek faith, without admitting it to be a principle of a 
double character, sometimes good and sometimes bad. Be- 
cause, if it compels the performance of one duty, by the 
breach of another ; and if the duty required to be fulfilled* 
is trivial, compared with that required to be infringed ; it 
would bestow on publiek faith a mixed character, and av$n 



?Q ARISTOCRACY. 

a prevalence of evil. Publick faith then, considered as a 
good moral principle, must either include and reconcile, a 
loyalty both to the publiek good and to contracts with indi- 
viduals ; or if the former is not a duty imposed by publick 
faith, it must be a duty of superior and superseding obli- 
gation. 

The construction of publick faith by monopoly, avarice 
and ambition, is precisely the reverse of this. They confine 
it to a fulfilment of every species of contract made by a 
government with individuals, especially if entered into for 
the purpose of gratifying themselves at the expense of a 
nation ; and thus limited, consider it as the most sacred of 
all duties. And so far are these glos§ographers, from con- 
sidering publick faith as a good moral principle, that they 
make it enforce contracts, entered into for every conceiva- 
ble vicious purpose; from those of betraying nations, 
armies, cities and forts, down to those of perjury, theft and 
assassination. Under this construction, whenever the pub- 
iiek good and a contract with an individual come in conflict, 
publick faith is made to decide, that the contract shall pre 
rail ; and thus its definition will come out, " national duty 
« to suffer oppression, and lose its liberty, by laws, charters 
€i or contracts, made by a government for that purpose* 
** provided they convey an interest to individual s." So 
■soon as it is thus changed from a good to a vicious princi- 
ple, its effects change also. From being a pledge of pub- 
lick good-, it becomes the protector of political fraud ; it 
compels a nation to be an accomplice in its own ruin : it takes 
from it the right of self-preservation ; and it becomes the 
modern subterfuge of the modern aristocracy. 

Hitherto, in comparing the duty of a government to a 
nation, and to a law charter, the comparison has been ex- 
hibited in the most favourable light for the latter, by for- 
bearing to insist upon any degree of criminality in a faction, 
which accepts of a charter from a government, injurious to 
a nation. It is, however, questionable, whether the priest- 
hood were innocent, which executed the evil of hierarchy $ 



ARISTOCRACY. 7* 

or the barons, who sustained that of the feudal aristocracy ; 
or the solicitors and holders of sinecure offices ; or those 
who pilfer a nation by means of a law charter. If their 
accomplices are not guilty, tyrants themselves must be 
innocent. 

Individuals may be aiders and abettors in projects re- 
plete with publick evil, without discerning their tendency $ 
but the rarity of this case is evinced, by the tacit compact 
and union produced by such projects. This compact and 
union, disclose a thorough knowledge of the interest on one 
side, and the injury on the other, because it is the plain 
effect of profit ; and a fear of losing profit can only be in- 
spired by a eonviction of committing an injury in its acqui- 
sition. This fear makes every individual who is conscious 
of drawing wealth from a nation unjustly, the friend and 
encomiast of the strongest power he can find ; because 
power is the only protector of injustice. And if he cannot 
find a power strong enough to protect injustice, he will ex- 
ert himself to erect one. When such a power exists, the 
more unfaithful it is to the publick good, the more its pub- 
lick faith will be celebrated by those who receive the bene- 
fit of its unfaithfulness. Lewis the fourteenth, an ignorant, 
fanatical and tyrannical prince, was celebrated even by phi- 
losophers, because he robbed the French nation, to give 
them pensions. 

Individuals, who do not derive their acquisitions from 
projects replete with publick evil, are never formed into a 
tacit compact or union, because, being unconscious of draw- 
ing gain from a nation unjustly, they have nothing to fear. 
Being unconscious of injustice, they are not naturally the 
friends and encomiasts of a power, strong enough to protect 
injustice. And deriving no benefit from the unfaithfulness 
®f a government to the publick good, they will not celebrate 
a government for it. In order to see the force of this com- 
parison, it is only necessary to conceive a society consisting 
of two classes, one made up of agriculturists, professions* 
trades and commerce, all unconnected with banking. 



72 ARISTOCRACY. 

funding and patronage ; the other, of a funding system, bank 
charters, pensions and patronage. Which class would be 
the disciple and parasite of despotism ? If this is discerni- 
ble, the consequence of erecting this modern species of 
aristocracy is also discernible. 

The exact similarity in nature and principle, between 
laws or charters establishing funding systems, banks, or si- 
necure profit of any kind ; and laws or charters establish- 
ing privileged orders or endowed hierarchies ; appears in 
their common union with, and devotion to, a power capable 
af protecting injustice. 

It is still objected « that unless laws, beneficial to indi- 
« viduals, though injurious to a nation, are supported, con- 
« fidence ia government will be destroyed, and national 
" credit, lost." The doctrine amounts to this ; (i that it is 
good policy in a nation, to make a few individuals its mas- 
ters or owners, to excite an inclination in these few indivi- 
duals to lend it money, for a handsome premium and high 
interest." And this policy is literally pursued, by esta- 
blishing a certain number of paper systems and charters, for 
drawing money from the nation directly or indirectly, in 
order to enable a few to lend a part of this money to the 
nation. 

To this item of the value of a confidence 6£ that laws 
and charters, injurious to a nation, but beneficial to indivi- 
duals, will be maintained," must be added a corruption of 
manners, arising from the traflick between a government 
and a faction, for the objects of gratifying the ambition of 
one dealer, and the avarice of the other ; and the customary 
violent and wretched parties, between the commencement 
of this confidence and its catastrophe. 

On the other hand, a confidence that laws and charters 
injurious to a nation, will be repealed, whenever their per- 
nicious tendency is discovered, will prevent the destructive 
evils generated by a contrary opinion ; will enable honest 
governments to correct the frauds of knavish 5 and will 
check or e v <*n cure ihe malevolence of factions. And one 



ARISTOCRACY* 7S 

effect of inestimable value flowing from this latter confi- 
dence, would be the detection and overthrow of an insidious 
sanction, under cover of which the modern aristocracy of 
paper and patronage, is fast fettering modern nations. 

The analysis of aristocracy, by the first, the second, and 
the third ages, has been used for the purpose of a distinct 
arrangement of the arguments adduced to explain the su- 
perstitious, feudal, and fiscal modes of enslaving nations, by 
placing the powers in the hands of a minority ; an effect? 
however produced, denominated aristocracy throughout this 
essay. But it is not intended to insinuate, that the causes 
of aristocracy have generally acted singly ; on the contrary, 
they more frequently unite. 

It was necessary thoroughly to understand the most 
prominent causes of aristocracy, before we proceeded to a 
closer examination of our civil policy, and Mr. Adams's 
principles ; in order to keep in mind that we have never 
seen a venerated and wealthy hierarchy, an army stronger 
than the nation, an endowed, titled and privileged order of 
men, or an incorporated, enriched or united faction, with- 
out having at the same time seen iAie aristocracy of the 
first, the second, or the third age. By recollecting this 
testimony, derived from universal experience, an infe- 
rence, equivalent to mathematical certainty, ** that such 
ends will eternally flow from such means,** will unavoidably 
present itself. 

Few would deny these premises or the inference, if it 
was proposed to revive oracles or feudal services. These 
causes of aristocracy are distinctly seen, because they do 
not exist. They have no counsel in court. They are, 
therefore, better understood than when they flourished. 
But both the premises and the inference are denied, when 
they implicate the aristocracy of paper and patronage. 
This cause of aristocracy is not seen, because it does exist ; 
and the more oppressive it shall become, the greater will 
be the difliculty of discovering its existence. The two first 

11 



74> ARISTOCRACY. 

are exposed naked to our view ; and the third, disguised m 
the garb of republicanism, and uttering patriotick words, 
joins the mob in kicking them about, by way of diverting 
the publick attention from itself. An opinion that aristo- 
cracy can only exist in the form of a hereditary order, or 
a hierarchy, is equivalent to an opinion, that the science of 
geometry ©an only be illustrated by a square or a triangle. 



[ *s J 



SECTION THE SECOND. 



THE PRINCIPLES OF THE POLICY OF THE UNITED 
STATES, AND OF THE ENGLISH POLICY, 

xSefore we proceed, to the consideration of the policy of 
the United States, it is necessary to discover a political 
analysis, founded in some moral principle ; because govern- 
ment is as strictly subject to the moral, as a physical being 
is to the physical laws of nature. Persons are not princi- 
ples ; and hence the operations of monarchy, aristocracy 
and democracy (governments founded in persons) are fluc- 
tuating : generally evil, but sometimes good ; whereas the 
effects of a moral principle are ever the same. Mr. Adams, 
however, adopts the ancient analysis of governments, asserts 
that it comprises all their generical forms, and adds " that 
every society naturally produces an order of men, which it 
is impossible to confine to an equality of rights;' 9 and he 
erects his system upon the foundations of this ancient ana- 
lysis, and of a natural or unavoidable aristocracy. If soci- 
ety cannot exist without aristocracy, (as it cannot, if aris^ 
tocracy is natural to society,) then democracy and monarchy 
cannot be generical forms of government, unless they can 
exist without society or with aristocracy. This disagree- 
ment between the ancient analysis, and a system bottomed 
upon it, at the threshold of their association ; and Mr. 
Adams's idea that one of his generical forms of government 
was a natural consequence of society, without contending 
that the others were, excited doubts of the correctness of 
that analysis. If monarchy, aristocracy and democracy 
are all natural or generical forms of government, nature 
has determined on Mr. Adams's mixed government, and his 
labours in favour of her will, were superfluous : but if 



76 PRINCIPLES OF THE POLICY OP THE V. STATES, 

either of these forms is artificial, it could not be natural or 
generieal, and an invention of one form by the human intel- 
lect, is no proof that it is unable to invent another. The terms 
monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, convey adequate 
ideas of particular forms of government, but they are insuf- 
ficient for the purpose of disclosing a government which 
will certainly be free and moderate, since the effects of each 
depend on the administration of wise and good, or of weak 
and wicked men : and all are therefore founded in the same 
principle, however differing in form. This both suggests a 
doubt of the soundness of the ancient analysis, and a solu- 
tion of the phenomenon " that all these natural or generieal 
forms of government should produce bad effects." The 
effects of these three forms are bad, because they are all 
founded on one principle, namely, an irresponsible undivided 
power ; and that principle is bad. We want an analysis, 
distinguishing governments in point of substance, and not 
limited to form. 

The moral qualities of human nature are good and evil. 
An analysis founded in this truth, however general, can 
alone ascertain the true character, and foretell the effects of 
any form of government, or of any social measure. Every 
such form and measure must have a tendency to excite the 
good or the evil moral qualities of man ; and according to 
its source, so will be its tendency with moral certainty. 

The strongest moral propensity of man, is to do good to 
himself. This begets a propensity to do evil to others, for 
the sake of doing good to himself. A sovereignty of the 
people, or self-government, is suggested by the first moral 
propensity; responsibility, division, and an exclusion of 
monarchy and aristocracy, by the second. 

Self love, being the strongest motive to do evil to 
others, as well as good to ourselves, will operate as forcibly 
to excite an individual or a faction to injure a nation for 
advancing self good, as to excite a nation to preserve its 
own happiness. Therefore, whilst national self govern- 
ment, is founded in the strongest moral qualify for pro- 



ANB OF THE ENGJLS3H FOIiXCY." 77 

dneing national good 5 every other species of government, 
is founded in the strongest moral quality for producing 
national evil. 

The objection to this analysis is, that nations may op- 
press individuals or minorities. An imperfection does not 
destroy comparative superiority 5 and should one be found 
in a form of government bottomed upon the quality of a na- 
tion's love for itself, it will not diminish the defects of forms, 
bottomed upon the self love of individuals or minorities, if 
these are as likely to oppress majorities, as majorities are 
to oppress these. 

The quality, self love, stimulates in proportion to the 
good or gratification in view. This prospect to an indivi- 
dual or minority, having power to extraet good or gratifi- 
cation from a nation, must be infinitely more alluring, thai 
to a nation, having power to extract good or gratification 
from an individual or a minority ; and as the excitement to 
injure others, for gratifying ourselves, will be in proportion 
to the extent of the gratification, it follows, that an indivi- 
dual or minority will be infinitely more likely to oppress a 
nation for self gratification, than a nation, for the same end* 
to oppress an individual or minority. , 

The certainty with which moral inferences flow from mo- 
ral causes, is illustrated by a computation of the cases, in 
which the quality of self love, has induced nations to op- 
press individuals, or individuals to oppress nations. The 
anomaly of a nation's becoming a tyrant over an individual, 
would be nearer to the character of prodigy, than even that 
of monarchy or aristocracy, preferring national good or 
gratification, to its own. 

It is from the want of some test, to determine whether a 
form of government, or law. is founded in the good or evil 
qualities of man, that the disciples of monarchy, aristocra- 
cy and democracy, have entered into the field of controver- 
sy, with so much zeal. Each, though Minded to the de- 
fects of the system he defend?, from education, habit, or a 
supposed necessity of enlisting under one, clearly discerns 



78 PRINCIPLES OF THE POLICY OF THE V. STATES, 

the defects of the system espoused by his adversary ; and 
despises him for a blindness, similar to his own. That mo- 
narchy, aristocracy and democracy will all make men mise- 
rable, is universally assented to, by two out of the three 
members of this analysis itself; and a contrary effect from 
either, is allowed by two to one to be out of the common 
course of events. A violation of the relation between cause 
and effect, awakens the admiration of mankind, whenever a 
good moral effeet proceeds from a government founded in 
3vil moral qualities. 

It is not enough for the illustration of our analysis, that 
a good efFeet from either monarchy, aristocracy or demo- 
cracy, is by this majority considered as a phenomenon ; a 
few reasons, accounting for it according to the principles of 
that analysis, will be added. 

Monarchy and aristocracy, have the strongest tendency 
of any conceivable human situation, to excite the evil moral 
quality, or propensity, of injuring others for our own bene- 
fit, both by the magnitude of the temptation, and the power 
of reaching it. A long catalogue of evil moral qualities, 
are included in this. These forms of government are there- 
fore founded in the evil moral qualities of man, and it is un- 
natural that evil moral qualities, should produce good mo- 
ral effects. 

Mr. Adams allows that evil consequences unavoidably 
arise from monarchy and aristocracy, by endeavouring to 
provide against them.' The probable success of his endea- 
vour will appear, by concisely reciting their cause. It con- 
sists in a degree of power capable of exciting evil moral 
qualities, craving self gratification at the expense of others. 
Nothing can prevent this excitement, but a removal of the 
power | and if the power is removed, the principle of monar- 
chy or aristocracy is destroyed, though the name should re- 
main. Mr. Adams's remedy can only remove the cause or 
leave the cause. If it remains, the effects follow. Our 
state governours would not be monarchs or despots, if they 
-were called kings ; because they want the degree of power 



AKO 01" THE ENGLISH POLICY. $9 

necessary to excite and bring into action, the evil moral qua- 
lities of nionarchs or despots. Henry the eighth would 
hare been a monarch or despot, though he had been called 
governour, because he possessed that degree of power. His 
species of government was founded in evil, and that of the 
States in good moral qualities. 

Democracy is not less calculated to excite evil moral 
qualities of one kind, than monarchy and aristocracy of ano- 
ther. By democracy is meant, a nation exercising person- 
ally the functions of government. Turbulence, instability.* 
injustice, suspicion, ingratitude, and excess of gratitude, 
are among the evil moral qualities, which this form of gov- 
ernment has a tendency to excite. Democracy, therefore,, 
is a form of government founded in evil moral qualities. 

All these forms of government were intended to be de~ 
stroyed in America, and a government, founded in the good 
moral qualities of man to be erected ; that is, one which 
would cautiously avoid to excite his evil qualities, and care- 
fully attempt to suppress them if they should appear. 

Democracy was destroyed by election ; and one errour 
of Mr. Adams consists in proposing to bring into the field 
monarchy and aristocracy, after their plebeian foe no long- 
er exists. As election has destroyed democracy, election, 
responsibility and division of power, were intended also to 
destroy monarchy and aristocracy. And if democracy may 
be destroyed, or at least filtered of its evil moral qualities 
by election, why may not monarchy and aristocracy be de- 
stroyed or filtered of their evil qualities likewise by elec- 
tion, responsibility and a division of power ? Or if for the 
sake of a balance of orders, it would be adviseable to revive 
monarchy and aristocracy in their natural malignancy, 
ought not democracy to be also revived in its natural ma- 
lignancy, to make out a complete system of checks and 
balances, in conformity to the ideas of Aristotle, who is 
quoted by Mr. Adams ? 

Aristotle, and all the ancient authors, by the term 
•< democracy," intended to describe a nation, legislating. 



SO PRINCIPLES OF THE POLICY OF THE tf. STATES, 

judging and sometimes even executing in person, Such is 
the form of government to "which, is ascribed all the evils 
of democracy, and which has in reality produced those evils. 
And Mr. Adams has transplanted all these evils from this 
ancient democracy into his book, as charges against the 
elective and responsible system of America ; with what 
degree of justice, will depend upon a resemblance between 
our system, and a nation exercising political and civil 
power within the wails of Athens or Rome. The democra- 
cy of Athens, and our policy, were founded in principles 
exactly opposite to each other. One was calculated to ex- 
cite a multitude of evil mora! qualities, which the other 
will suppress, by representation, responsibility and division. 
An imperfect representation in England, suppressed the 
evil effects attached to the Athenian democracy, and though 
imperfect, evinced the excellence of the principle of repre- 
sentation, by moderating the malignancy of monarchy and 
aristocracy. Had democracy, monarchy and aristocracy, 
according to the ancient ideas annexed to these terms, been 
mingled and balanced, a government would have been pro- 
duced, which may be contemplated, by placing an English 
king at the head of the democracy and aristocracy of Rome. 
By the addition of one good principle to tw r o bad ones, the 
paroxysms of good, and the predominance of evil, under the 
English form, are accounted for. And by removing the 
evil principles, monarchy and aristocracy, to make room for 
division and responsibility ; as the evil principle, democracy, 
has been removed by representation ; mankind will proba- 
bly escape the calamities inflicted by these evil principles, 
on the English nation. 

The inherent evil nature of monarchy, aristocracy and 
democracy, can only furnish a solution of the fact, testified 
by all history* *< that each separately, any two, and the three 
however mingled, have uniformly produced evil «efieets, 
which have driven mankind into a multitude of exchanges 
and modifications," From all, disappointment has issued. 
because good effects eonld not he extracted ftofh 



AJTD OF THE BXGLISH TOLICY* 8i 

principles. At length, all philosophers, politicians and 
learned men have been taught by experience to unite in one 
opinion. They universally agree, that monarchy, aristo- 
cracy and democracy, acting separately, will produce evil 
to nations ; they agree, that any two will operate oppress- 
ively ; and they also agree that the three, however blended*- 
excluding the modern idea of representation, will also ope- 
rate oppressively. Is it then possible, that the ancient ana- 
lysis of political systems, which separately or combined, 
presented only a form of government now universally ac- 
knowledged to be bad, could have been correct ? 

From a belief that a political analysis does exist, capa- 
ble of arranging all forms of government into two classes ; 
one rooted in good, and the other in evil moral qualities ; 
and that monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, singly or 
united, belong to the latter class ; the idea has been brought 
before the reader preparatory to arguments designed to 
prove, that the civil policy of the United States must be 
assigned to the first class ; that it is of course at enmity 
with Mr. Adams's mixture of monarchy, aristocracy and 
representation ; but that certain of its details and laws, are 
at enmity with its essential principles, for want of some 
distinct analysis as a test to ascertain their nature ami 
effects. A position contended for is, << that political tempt 
ations, which propel to vice, are founded in evil moral 
principles." 

The reader is solicited for the last time, to keep in mind, 
that in this essay, the term " democracy' 9 means « a gov- 
ernment administered by the people," and not "the right 
of the people to institute a government, nor the responsibili- 
ty of Magistrates to the people." The contrast of the an- 
cient analysis between its three forms of government, is im- 
perfect unless democracy is thus understood, since the two 
terms opposed to it, are used to specify governments, as nu- 
merically administered. Monarchy and aristocracy mean, 
governments administered by one or a few, and not a right 
in one or a few to institute a government, and make it 

12 



32 PRINCIPLES OF THE POLICY OP THE U. STATES, 

responsible to the institutor. Democracy also meant, & 
government administered by the people personally. The 
distinction is considered as useful, for relieving the mind 
from an association, between the sovereignty of the people, 
and the evils produced by a nation's exercising the functions 
of government. 

Let us now take up the thread of this essay. I have 
endeavoured to prove that aristocracy is artificial and not 
natural ; that the aristocracies of superstition and landed 
/weali-i have been destroyed by knowledge, commerce and 
alienation ; that a new aristocracy has arisen during the 
last century from paper and patronage, of a character so 
different from titled orders, as not to be compressible with- 
in Mr. Adams's system ; and that his system is evidently 
defective, in having silently past over this powerful aristo- 
cracy, now existing in England. 

By the civil policy of the United States, I mean the 
general and state constitutions, as forming one system. 
Most of the state constitutions existed when Mr. Adams 
wrote, and no new principles have been introduced by those 
since created. The differences among them all, consist only 
in modifications of the same principles. As immaterial is 
the anachronism of applying Mr. Adams's reasoning to the 
general constitution, because if his system is inimical to 
that, it must have been more so to the state constitutions he 
professed to defend ; as in that, the executive and senato- 
rial lines are drawn with a stronger pencil than in those.* 

Mr. Adams's system simply is, " that nature will cre- 
ate an aristocracy, and that policy ought to create a king, 
or a single, independent executive power, and a house of 
popular representatives, to balance it." 

Let one of the state constitutions speak for the rest. 
That of Massachusetts declares, that « all men are born 
s * free and equal." That " no man, or corporation, or asse- 
*'•' eiation of rcien, have any other title to obtain advantages, 
« or particular and exclusive privileges, distinct from those 

* Adams's Def. 3 v. 1S7 k 426. 



JLJSTi 0* THE ENGLISH POLICY. 8£ 

"of the community, than what arises from the eonsidera- 
" tion of services, rendered to the publick. And this title 
" being, in nature, neither hereditary, nor transmissible to 
* children, or descendants, or relations by blood, the idea 
" of a man born a magistrate, lawgiver or judge, is absurd 
H and unnatural." " That the people have the sole and ex- 
" elusive right of governing themselves." That "govern- 
" ment is instituted for the common good, for the proteo- 
" tion, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people ; and 
" not for the profit, honour, or private interest of any one 
" man, family, or class of men." And that " in order to 
" prevent those, who are vested with authority, from becom- 
" ing oppressors, the people have a right, at such periods, 
" and iii such manner, as they shall establish by their frame 
" of government, to cause their publick officers to return 
fc to private life ,• and to fill up vacant places, hy certairn 
" and regular elections and appointments." Two prinej? 
pies are clearly expressed by them all ; one, that every 
person in authority is responsible and removable 5 the 
other, that talents, virtue, and political power, are not 
inheritable. 

These principles are precisely levelled at the opinions* 
that monarchy is divine, and nobility natural ; the first as- 
serted by Filmer, the last by Mr. Adams. And they treat 
the idea of hereditary power, contended for by Mr. Adams, 
as " absurd and unnatural. 99 * 

The constitutions build their policy upon the basis of 
human equality — " all men are born free and equal f 9 and 
erect the artificial inequalities of civil government, with a 
view of preserving and defending the natural equality of 
individuals. Mr. Adams builds his policy upon the basis of 
human inequality by nature — " aristocracy is natural ;" and 
proposes to produce an artificial level or equality, not of 
individuals, but of orders, composed of individuals naturally 
unequal. Yet the disciples of the balance, accuse the re- 
publicans of levelism. 

* Mr. Adams calls Filmer's notions *« absued and srKEBSTiTiors."— 
Vol. 1. 7. 



34 PRINCIPLES OF THE POLICY OF THE U. STATES, 

It is necessary to affix a correct idea to the term 
« equality ," contended for by the constitutions, and denied 
jby Mr. Adams. They do not mean an equality of stature, 
strength or understanding, but an equality of moral rights 
and duties. The constitutions admit of no inequality in these 
moral rights and duties, excepting that produced by tem- 
porary and responsible power, conferred " for the common 
good." Mr. Adams contends for a natural inequality of 
moral rights and duties, in contending for a natural aristo- 
cracy. The constitutions establish the inequalities of tem- 
porary and responsible power, with a view of maintaining 
an equality of moral rights and duties among the individuals 
of society ; and Mr. Adams proposes orders, with a view 
of maintaining his natural inequality among men, by 
balancing or equalising the rights of orders. 

The constitutions consider a nation as made of indivi- 
duals ; Mr. Adams's system, as made of orders. Nature, 
by the constitutions, is considered as the creator of men : 
by the system, of orders. The first idea suggests the sove- 
reignty of the people, and the second refutes it ; because, if 
nature creates the ranks of the one, the few and the many, 
the nation must be compounded of these ranks ; and one 
rank, politically, is the third part of a nation. These ranks 
composing the nation, have of course a power to alter the 
form of government at any time, without consulting the 
people, because the people do not constitute the nation. An 
illustration of this idea has several times occurred in the 
English practice of Mr. Adams's system. 

By most of the constitutions, a plural executive is cre- 
ated ; by a few, a qualified negative upon laws is given to 
the executive power ; but in all, that power is made subor- 
dinate to the legislative power. Mr. Adams declares, that 
a single executive, having an unqualified negative upon 
the laws, and power sufficient to defend himself against 
the other two branches of the legislature, is essential to his 
system. 



AND 0!F THE ENGLISH I y O!ICY u $$ 

Ju short, Mr. Adams's system is bottomed upon a classi- 
fication of men ; our constitutions, upon an application of 
moral principles to human nature* He arranges men into 
the one, the few and the many, and bestows on the one and 
the few, more power than he gives to the many, to counter- 
balance numerical or physical strength ; our constitutions 
divide power with a view to the responsibility of the agent, 
and jealous of the danger of accumulating great power in 
the hands of one or a few, because all history proves that 
this species of condensation begets tyranny, bestow most 
power on their most numerous functionary. 

Mr. Godwin, in his "Political Justice," v. 2. p. 180, as- 
serts that " scarcely any plausible argument can be adduced 
in favour of what has been denominated by political writers 
a division of power." This authoritative decision seems to 
have been made, without any consideration of the ground 
upon which a division of power is justified in this essay. 
Mr. Adams confines a division of power, to a division of or- 
ders of men ; Mr. Godwin extends it to a division of orders 
of power, such as legislative, executive and judicative; but 
this essay, considering a classification of power into orders, 
as little less erroneous than a classification of men, extends 
the idea of its division to the counteraction of monopoly in 
any form, by a man, an order or a government, in' a degree 
sufficient to excite ambition, avarice or despotism. This 
idea of a division of power is consonant to the policy of the 
United States, as is evinced by the responsibility of the exe- 
cutive, the allotments of power to the state and the general 
governments, and the reservations from the powers of both, 
retained by the people; and is distinct from the ideas both 
of Mr. Adams and Mr. Godwin. The latter gentleman's 
opinions in favour of a division of property, and against a 
division of power, are inconsistent, if a monopoly of either, 
will beget a monopoly of both ; if wealth attracts power, and 
power wealth. The same principles dictate a distribution 
of both ; and the same effects flow from an accumulation of 
either. A law of primogeniture in respect to power, is 



S6 PRINCIPLES OP THE POLICY OF THE TJ. STATES, 

similar to a law of primogeniture in respect to property. 
The objection to both is comprised in their enmity to the 
principle of division. This subject will occur again in a 
subsequent part of this essay. 

Let us pause, and take a glance at the title of Mr. 
Adams's treatise. Why was it called " a defence of the 
constitutions of government of the United States of Ameri- 
ca ?" It assails the principle, upon which these constitutions 
%re founded j it asserts doctrines which they condemn ; and 
it justifies a system of government which would be a revo- 
lution of them all. If this unsuitable title, arose from an 
incapacity to distinguish between the principles of our poli- 
cy, and those of a system of balanced orders, the errour is 
pardonable, and only destroys the authority of the treatise ; 
but if it was an artifice, to mask under a pretended affection 
for our principles of government, an attack upon them, the 
erudition of the treatise will not be able to conceal, nor the 
freedom of political disquisition to justify, the insincerity of 
such an intention. 

To prove the correctness of this criticism, it is necessa- 
ry to return more particularly to Mr. Adams's treatise, for 
the purpose of elucidating its drift beyond the possibility of 
misapprehension. Thus also we shall advance in a know- 
ledge of the policy of the United States, and of that of En- 
gland ; which are important objects of this essay. 

The pretext for Mr. Adams's treatise, appears in the 
first page of the first volume, in the following extract of a 
letter from Mr. Turgot, to Doctor Price : " that he is T not 
« satisfied with the constitutions which have hitherto been 
■ Ji formed for the different States of America. That by 
«* most of them the customs of England are imitated, with-* 
(i out any particular motive. Instead of collecting all au- 
* thority into one centre, thai of the nation, they have es- 
4i tablished different bodies, a body of representatiTes, a 
" council, and a gorernour, because there is in England a 
w house of commons, a house of lords, and a king. They 
if endeavour to balance these different powers, as if this 



4tfD OF THE ENGLISH POLICY* 87 

'«• equilibrium, which in England may be a necessary check 
" to the enormous influence of royalty, could be of any use 
.«« in republicks founded upon the equality of all the citi- 
« zens, and as if establishing different orders of men was 
* 6 not a source of divisions and disputes." 

Against this charge, Mr. Adams exhibits a defence for 
the constitutions in a mode entirely new. He labours to 
prove that every word of it is true, and that the balance of 
power, and orders of men, spoken of by Mr. Turgot, have 
been borrowed by us from England, and do in fact consti- 
tute the only good form of government. 

The task of proving the charge untrue, would have heen 
much easier. I will concisely endeavour to do so, before I 
proceed in the examination of the use Mr. Adams has made 
of it. 

A celebrated author has pronounced in a tone of great 
authority, that « government is in all cases an evil."* This 
assertion, and Mr. Turgot's misconception, are founded in 
the same errour ; that of contemplating monarchy, aristo- 
cracy and democracy, as an analysis comprising every form 
of government. These being all founded in evil moral 
principles, would produce evil eifects, and Mr. Godwin be- 
holding this fact, pronounces « that government is in all ca- 
ses an evil," because he had not conceived any other ele- 
ments of governments, except those of monarchy, aristocra- 
cy and democracy ; and these producing much evil, his re- 
medy is to destroy government itself. But had he consider- 
ed, that government could not be an evil, if it was founded 
in principles which would excite the good moral qualities 
of human nature, he would have searched for some such 
form, capable of excluding monarchy, aristocracy and de- 
mocracy, all of which produce evil, because of their tenden- 
cy to excite man's evil qualities. 

The same analysis led Mr. Turgot into a misconception 
of the principles of our policy. Supposing us to be tied 
down to a form compounded of the whole analysis, or of 

* Godwin on Pol. Jus : v. 2. 21-1. 



dS PRINCIPLES OF THE POLICY OP THE V. STATES, 

one op two members of it, and preferring democracy to a 
mixed government, he concluded that our governments were 
compounded of the whole analysis, because he could not dis- 
cern the object of his preference ; and in not being able to 
discern democracy among our state constitutions, Mr. Tur~ 
got justifies the idea, which supposes that the evil " demo- 
cracy" is as capable of remedy, as the evils " monarchy and 
aristocracy," and that it is actually removed by our system 
of government. 

Mr. Turgor, not seeing the object of his preference, has- 
tily concluded our policy to have copied the English ; and 
founds his conclusion in an opinion, that it makes state go- 
vernours kings, balances powers, and establishes orders of 
men. All this is obviously erroneous. We have less of 
monarchy and aristocracy in our policy, both of which he 
pretends to see, than of democracy, which he could not sec. 
Instead of balancing power, we divide it and make it respon- 
sible, to prevent the evils of its accumulation in the hands of 
one interest. And such is the force of this principle of di- 
viding power, to excite the good, and suppress the evil qua- 
lities of man, that among several hundred state governours 
who have already existed, not one instance has appeared of 
kingly qualities, of usurpation, or of war between neigh - 
bouring states. Why have the state governments escaped 
the evils of monarchy ? For the same reason that they have 
escaped those of aristocracy and democracy. This exam- 
ple of the good moral conduct of their governours, testifies 
to the correctness of our analysis. Instead of monarchy, 
which excites evil qualities, our division (not a balance) of 
power, renders it responsible, and brings good qualities out 
of governours ; and instead of a tumultuary nation, election, 
by division also, is filtered of its worst vice, and brings good 
qualities out of the mass of the people, Whereas a balance 
of power or a balance of orders (for it will amount to the 
same thing) has constantly produced a spirit as bitter as the 
animosity between rival clans, and caused distraction and 
misery, until the latter becomes permanent in a despotism, 



AND OF THE ENGLISH POLICY. 89 

begotten by the predominance of one order or of one power. 
Mr. Turgot's errour in supposing our constitutions to 
have been formed by tke English model, and his condemna- 
tion of such an imitation, afforded an opportunity precisely 
fitted for Mr. Adams's purpose. He assumes our defence 
against the condemnation, and assails Mr. Turgot's prefe- 
rence for collecting all authority into one centre. In justi- 
fying us against Turgot's condemnation for having copied 
the English system, it was incumbent on Mr. Adams to 
prove that system to be the most perfect model of civil po- 
licy ; in endeavouring to effect this, he was enabled to make 
some use of our prepossessions, by scattering in his first vo- 
lume a few compliments to our constitutions ; these howe- 
ver are bestowed upon them as copies, but like copies, they 
are presently forgotten in the admiration excited by the ori- 
ginal. 

Turgot condemns a balance of power, and different ci- 
ders of men, and approves of collecting all authority into 
one centre, the nation. Mr. Adams tacitly admits our con- 
stitutions to be artificers of this balanee and these orders, 
converts Turgot's centre into a single chamber of represen- 
tatives, engages these phantoms in hostility, and astounds 
us with history, anecdote, poetry and fable, to prove — what? 
That Mr. Turgot was mistaken in supposing that these 
were political orders created by our constitutions ? No. To 
prove that such orders naturally existed, and that no good 
government could be formed, except by balancing power 
among such orders. 

Whether Mr. Turgot approves or not, of concentrating 
all power in a single house of representatives, is immate- 
rial; except that Mr. Adams, by supposing him to do so, has 
very artificially interwoven, an assault upon that idea, a 
vindication of a mixed or limited monarchy, and a few slight 
compliments to our constitutions, lie uses the constitu- 
tions as a weak ally in carrying on the war against Turgot's 
centre of power, places the system of limited monarchy in 



99 PRINCIPLES OF THE PaLICY OF THE U. STATES, 

the van of the battle, and gives it all the credit of conscious 
victory. 

Turgot's idea of « collecting all authority into one cen- 
tre,'' " that of the nation," might possibly have extended to 
national sovereignty only, without condemning a distribution 
of power among publick functionaries by a moderate scale; 
but Mr. Adams, by making that centre to consist of on» 
house of representatives, seized upon the str< ngest ground 
for exhibiting representative government in distortion. To 
render monarchy most hateful, all power ought to be exhi- 
bited in the hands of a single man ; so to render representa- 
tion hateful, the best exhibition, is all power in the hands 
of a single house. We caricature what we wish to make 
odious, and adorn what we wish to recommend. Thus 
Mr. Adams contrasts republicanism in its most hideous* 
with monarchy, in its most becoming dress. One he adorns 
with his cheeks and balances, his jealousy among orders, 
and his patrician virtues ; and tells no tale of woe produced 
by its vices : the other he places in a centre of monopoly, 
from whence she is made to hurl legislative, executive and 
judicial destruction on friends and enemies* It is admitted 
that the object of his embellishment, might possibly be some 
relief against the monster disfigured for its foil. 

But the question so important to America, is not to be 
thus eluded. Because Mr. Turgot has charged us with ha- 
ving established governments, bottomed upon the English 
system of balancing classes of power, and creating orders 
of men ; and because Mr. Adams has defended our govern- 
ments against this charge, not by denying it, but by endea- 
vouring to prove that system to be the best ,• it does not fol- 
low that our political policy is really that of the English* 
It only results from the charge and defence, that Mr. Tur- 
got condemned and Mr. Adams approved of the Englisk 
policy. And although Mr. Adams has been pleased to en- 
gage that p <^cy in hostilities with Turgot's phantasm, of 
concentrating all power in one chamber of representatives. 
f)f such an opinion i^ justly ascribed to him) a victory on 



AltfD 0¥ THE ENGLISH POLICY. 91 

either side can furnish no conclusion or inference applicable 
to the civil policy of the United States. That consists nei- 
ther of Mr. Adams's orders and balance, nor of Turgot's 
chamber. It stands aloof, and like a giant looks down 
without interest on this pigmy war. Shall one of the pig- 
mies, because he has beaten the other, be considered as hav- 
ing also obtained a victory over the giant ? 

The question is not to be eluded. Whether Mr. Tur- 
got's chamber, or Mr. Adams's orders and balances, consti- 
tute the best form of government, is not a question with 
which the United States have any concern ; and that is the 
question discussed by Mr. Adams. If he has gained a vic- 
tory over Turgot, it is not a victory also over the policy of 
the United States, unless that policy is Turgot's, though 
disclaimed by him ; nor is our policy entitled to any share 
of his laurels, unless it is, as Turgot asserted, the English 
policy. 

However disguised, the true question is discernible,, 
It simply is, whether the existing form of government of 
the United States, or the English limited monarchy is pre- 
ferable. It is in this question that we are interested. This 
question has not been discussed by Mr. Adams, in mauling 
Turgot's chamber with his balances. But we ought to ac- 
quire a thorough knowledge of the English system and its 
principles, and of our own system and its principles, to disco- 
ver wherein they differ, and to bestow with justice the contes- 
ted preference. Much of our labour has already been appro- 
priated towards this important object ; more is jet neces- 
sary. At present we will proceed in our endeavours to 
ascertain with preeiseness the opinion of the author upon 
whose work we are commenting. 

Mr. Adams's second volume commences with the follow- 
ing motto : « As for us Englishmen, thank heaven we have 
" a better sense of government delivered to us from our 
" ancestors. We have the notion of a publick, and a const i- 
*' tution ; how a legislature, and how an executive is mould 
" ed; we understand weight and measure in this kind, and 



02 PRINCIPLES OF THE POLICY OF THE XT. STATES, 

" can reason justly on the balance of yoiver and property * 
« The maxims we draw from hence, are as evident as those 
" of mathematicks. Our increasing knowledge, shows every 
" day what common sense is in politicks."^ 

In a motto, an author condenses his opinion and his sub- 
ject, to the utmost of his power. This combines a strong 
idea of the English system, with a stronger approbation of 
it. No preference can be stronger than one founded in 
mathematical evidence ; and no room remains for farther 
political discovery, after mathematical demonstration. If 
the English system possesses this degree of perfection, it 
excels ours by the confession of our constitutions, in provi- 
sions for their own improvement. 

Shaftsbury wrote this sentence, about a century past, 
when the system of paper and patronage was neither under- 
stood nor felt in England, and when a portion of the landed 
wealth of the nobility remained, sufficient to bestow some 
importance upon that order. What does he say produced 
these mathematical political maxims of the English sys- 
tem ? « A balance of power and property :" power and pro- 
perty are the indissoluble companions by which the system 
was regulated. If property and nobility became divided, 
would power and nobility continue united ? Neither the ac 
tual nor comparative wealth of the English nobility is now 
what it was a century past. Paper systems, patronage and 
commerce, have overturned the balance which furnished 
Shaftsbury's mathematical political maxims. And as accor- 
ding to these maxims, power with mathematical certainty 
will follow property, so the existence of the aristocracy of 
paper and patronage? contended for by this essay, is esta- 
blished upon Lord Shaftsbury's principles, and by Mr. 
Adams's motto. 

When Lord Shaftsbury wrote, the balance of property 
in England was created on the part of the king, by the do- 
mains annexed to his office, by certain pecuniary acquisitions 

■ In the edition of 1757, the words are " us Brit6ns'.**-^-£xtracted from 
,-hsf-Kbury's Charact. v. 1, part 3d, sec, 1. p. 83. 



AND OTF THE BNGXISH POLICE. £S 

derived from prerogative, by some patronage, and by an 
annuity for life ; and on the part of the nobility, by the ex- 
tent and value of their manors. Now, the last weight, is no 
longer in the scale ; and the first, has become ponderous* 
Is the balance between these two orders, even without tak- 
ing into the account the new weight created by paper and 
patronage, what it was a century past ? If not, will different 
weights, a new or a broken balance^ supply Mr. Adams 
with the same mathematical maxims of government, which 
Shaftsbury, mathematically also, extracted from a differ 
ent balance ? 

Both these authors unequivocally affirm the necessity of 
a balance of property, whereon to establish the balance of 
power constituting the English system. Let us apply this 
awful acknowledgement to the situation of the United 
States, without suffering political prejudice to suspend our 
judgments. Does this balance of property, indispensable to 
the British and Mr. Adams's system, in tlie opinion of 
Shaftsbury and Mr. Adams, exist here ? If not, with what 
propriety has Mr. Adams contended that his system, was 
the system of the United States ? Of his, this balance of 
property is the essence ; of theirs, it forms no part. 

The admitted necessity of a balance of property, for the 
existence of Mr. Adams's system, unfolds visibly to eveiy 
politician, however superficial, that his system cannot exist 
without it ; and the mode of introducing a balance of pro- 
perty here, is then to be considered. 

By two ways only, has it ever been effected in England. 
First, by royal domains and feudal baronies. Secondly, by 
a million annuity, executive patronage, and the paper sys- 
tem. To effect this balance of property here in the first 
mode, it would be necessary to strip a sufficient number of 
landholders of their property, for the purpose of creating a 
landed king, and a landed aristocracy : but as this mode of 
making a balance of property among orders, would be too 
direct to be safe, the observation only furnishes a conclusive 



<H PRINCIPLES OF THE POLICY OF THE XJ. STATES, 

proof, that a landed aristocracy can never be created in the 
United States, as a member of Mr. Adams's system. 

The other mode of coming at this balance, is to trans- 
fer property to the system of paper and patronage. Andi 
this being the only practicable mode, those who calculate 
that the system of balancing power and property, will be- 
stow on them an unequal share of both, will use it as the 
only means of advancing that system. This would create 
a monopoly of property, not by taking the lands from the 
owners directly, but by taking their profits indirectly, with 
charters of profit, stock and patronage. By this mode, the 
president must be endowed with the patronage and the an- 
nual million of the king of England, to bestow on him the 
wealth necessary to form one order, and a monied aristo- 
cracy must be raised by such pretexts as may occur, to cre- 
ate another. 

The motto therefore proposes two questions for the rea- 
der's consideration. One, whether this English system of 
balancing power and property, as existing when Shaftsbu- 
ry wrote, or at this time, is the system of the United States 5 
the other, whether it would be wise or just in the United 
States, to exchange their system for it. 

To determine the first question, the fact will suffice. 
That, as stated by Lord Shaftsbury, and contended for by 
Mr. Adams, simply is, that an allotment of property and 
power is necessary among the one, the few and the many, 
to sustain or create, the English or Mr. Adams's system of 
government. And it is explicitly declared, that this allot- 
ment must amount to a balance or an equality. Hence, it 
is obvious, that the orders consisting of the one and the few, 
must each be endowed with a portion of power and proper- 
ty equal to that bestowed on the order consisting of the ma- 
ny. Therefore the system can neither subsist or be intro- 
duced without a vast accumulation of power and property 
in the individual and the minor order. Such is the fact on 
one side. On the other, it is a fact equally undeniable, that 
it is the policy of the United States to divide, and not to 



iff!) 0* THE ENGLISH £01IC1f. $& 

accumulate power and property. It follows that the system 
of halaneing power and property in the hands of orders, is 
not the system of the United States. 

To determine the second question, the argument of this 
essay must be estimated. Here it is only necessary to re- 
mark, that the wisdom of an exchange of our system for 
Mr. Adams's, will often be affirmed or denied by the dic- 
tates of self interest. Requiring as it does, that two thirds 
of the power and property of the nation, should be transfer- 
ed to the one, and the few, it is probable that those who 
expect a share of this acquisition, so wonderfully adapted to 
solicit the exertions of ambition and avarice, will attempt to 
persuade us, that the exchange would be wise ; on the con- 
trary, as the order of the many, must furnish nearly the 
whole of the power and property necessary to bring up the 
two other orders to a balance with itself, it is as probable? 
that no individual, who understands the subject, and believes 
that he will be a member of the order to be despoiled, will 
approve of the exchange. He will see, that to make orders 
equal in power and property, is to make individuals une- 
qual ; and that it would be simply a case of dividing twelve 
millions of children belonging to one man, into three or- 
ders, of one, of about one hundred and fifty, and of eleven 
millions nine hundred and ninety nine thousand, eight hun- 
dred and forty nine ; and of bestowing one third of the inhe- 
ritance upon each order. It is very conceivable that the 
individuals who composed the two first orders, might be ve- 
ry well pleased with the system of such a balance of power 
and property, and that those belonging to the third, would 
have no great cause to rejoice. Nor would a child of the 
multitude, be easily convinced of the justice and wisdom of 
the system of balancing power and property, by a difference 
in the mode of effecting it ; whether this was done by the 
force of the feudal system, or the fraud of paper and patro- 
nage, would make no difference in the consequences to him. 
He would therefore prefer the inequalities produced by ta- 
lents, and industry, to the system of levelling orders. 



m PKIirCIPI.ES OF THE POLICY OF THE U. STATES, 

We will wow proceed with our quotations, to exhibit a 
few of the amplifications of this motto to be found through- 
out Mr. Adams's second and third volumes, his unqualified 
approbation of its doctrine, and his unsuccessful efforts to 
compress the policy of the United States within its tenour. 

" When k is found in experience, and appears probable 
« in theory, that so simple an invention as a separate exe- 
s' eutive, with power to defend itself, as a full remedy 
" against the fatal effects of dissentions between nobles and 
«* commons, why should we still finally hope that simple 
(i governments, or mixtures of two ingredients only, will 
" produce effects which they never did, and we know never 
« can ? Why should the people be still deceived with insi- 
« nuations, that these evils arose from the destiny of a par- 
« tieular city, when we know that destiny common to ail 
<< mankind ?"# 

It is obvious that Mr, Adams is here contemplating mo 
narehy, aristocracy and democracy, and not moral princi- 
ples, as the only ingredients of government ; and that in his 
division of power, he thinks It necessary to assign to the ex- 
ecutive order (which he in other places limits to a single 
person) a quota, sufficient to enable him to defend himself 
against the plebeian order. In the United States, the exe- 
cutive power is dependent on the people. The quota of 
power cannot by his system be given, without a correspond- 
ent balance of wealth. The wealth then of Mr. Adams's 
executive order, must also balance the wealth of the ple- 
beian order. 

The assertion, that neither one nor two of these ingredi- 
ents, can produce effects correspondent to our hopes, though 
exactly as true, as that a mixture of all three will equ illy 
disappoint us, positively affirms the necessity of this mix- 
ture ; and when coupled with the deception into which such 
hopes have seduced the people, acknowledges, both that the 
policy of the. United States did not embrace this mixture, 

* Adams's Def. v. 2. p, 53. The third Philadelphia edition is quoted 
throucrhotit this essav 



AND OF THE ENGLISH FOLIC*, 9~ 

and that it was an experiment unpromising in theory, and 
forbidden by experience. The treatise is addressed to the 
people of the United States ; no other people who could 
come to a knowledge of it, entertained an enmity in 1786, 
against kings and nobles ; the deprecated deception and the 
political errour, alleged in the extract, to exist, must there 
fore exclusively refer to the publick opinion of the people of 
the United States, and to the texture of their governments. 
And thus are justified by the admission of Mr. Adams, the 
opinions asserted in this essay; that our policy is not the 
English ; and that Mr. Adams, instead of defending it, as he 
proposed, has, under colour of refuting Turgot's project of 
a single centre of power, laboured to establish its inferiori- 
ty to the English system. 

« Here was the best possible opportunity for introducing 
« the most perfect form, by giving the executive power to 
" one of the Medici, the power of the purse to the people., 
< ( and the legislative power to both, together with the note* 
« lity."* 

The best possible opportunity in this extract spoken of 
was a conjuncture in the history of Florence, at $ r hieh the 
people expelled an usurper or a monarch of the Mediceaft 
family, and attempted to establish a popular government. 
That conjuncture was analogous to our expulsion of a mo- 
narch of the Guelph family. . The Florentine conjuncture, 
says Mr. Adams, afforded the best possible opportunity for 
introducing the most perfect form of government, namely 
that of king, lords and commons. And the king was to be 
taken from the usurping and expelled family. 

The last extract consisted of a positive declaration, that 
li?nited monarchy was the most perfect form of government, 
and a positive opinion as to the best conjuncture for intro 
ducing it. The following is of a similar character. 

" The sovereign or rather the first magistrate of ihh 
w monarchical republick, is the king of Prussia. Without 
" descending to a particular account, of this princely repuh 

* Adams's Def. v. 2. 163. 

1# 



93 PRINCIPLES OF THE POLICY OF THE V. STATES, 

« lick, let me refer you to the Dietionaire de la Martiniere, 
** and to Faber, printed at the end of the sixth volume of it, 
I* and to Coxe's sketches, and to conclude with hinting at a 
" few features of this excellent constitution. None but na- 
" tives are capable of holding any office, civil or military, 
**■ excepting that of governour. The three estates shall be 
" assembled every year. The magistrates and officers of 
"justice shall hold their employments during good beha- 
" viour ; nor is the king the judge of ill behaviour. The 
<s king at his accession takes an oath to maintain all rights, 
w liberties, franchises, and customs, written or unwritten* 
i6 The king is considered as resident only at Neuchattel, 
«•' and therefore when absent can only address the citizens 
" through his goveruour and the council of state. No eiti- 
" zen can be tried out of Hie country or otherwise than by 
u the judges. The prince confers nobility, and nominates 
w to the principal offices of state, civil and military. The 
ii Prince in his absencp is represented by a governor of his 
" own appointing. He convokes the three estates."* 

It is not intended to insult the reader by pointing out 
the seve&l eulogies upon monarchy and orders in this ex- 
tract, nor is it hardly necessary to draw his attention to a 
repetition of an idea similar to that furnished by the prece- 
ding. In that, the reward of an usurping family, by placing 
one of it on a throne, would, it was said, have been good po- 
licy ; and that the era of its expulsion, was the best possible 
opportunity for this experiment. In this, a government of 
orders, in which the king is absent, is said to be an " ex- 
cellent constitution." Added to the absence of the king; 
the exclusion from office of all except natives, three estates 
assembled annually, a coronation oath, a fiction to acquire 
the presence of the king, trial within the country, a right 
in the Prince to confer nobility and appoint officers, and a 
locum tenens king called governor, comprise every feature 
of the Neuchattel constitution, urged to convince us of its 
excellence, 

* Adams's Defence, v. % 446 & 448. 



AND OF "THE ENfiffllSH POLICY. 80 

I remember to have seen a book nearly contemporary 
with 3Ir. Adams's defence, written by a Sir John Dalrym- 
ple, an Englishman, containing a proposition for a reunion 
between England and the United States, upon terms nearly 
similar to the constitution of Neucliattel, celebrated by Mr, 
Adams. And had these two gentlemen been appointed ple- 
nipotentiaries to treat of this proposal, the only point for 
discussion which seems to have been left unsettled by the 
extract and Dalrymple's book, would have been, whether 
Neucliattel, in Switzerland, as divided from Prussia by 
land, was more commodiously situated for a Prussian, thaa 
the United States, for an English king. 

As to the preferable form of government, no disagree- 
ment could have happened between the negociators, unless 
the following quotations are really eulogies upon our own 
policy. 

" But there is a form of government which produces a 
" love of law, liberty and country, instead of disorder, irre- 
« gulari ty and a faction x which produces as much and more 
m independence of spirit, and as much undaunted bravery ; 
" as much esteem of merit in preference to wealth, and as 
" great simplicity, sincerity and generosity to all the com- 
« munity, as others do to a faction ; which produces as great 
« a desire of knowledge, and infinitely better faculties to 
"pursue it; which besides produces security of property, 
« and the desire and opportunities for commerce, which ihe 
" others obstruct. Shall any one hesitate then to prefer 
« such a government to all others ? A constitution in which 
ff the people reserve to themselves the absolute control of 
« their purses, one essential branch of the legislature, and 
" the inquest of grievances and state crimes, will always 
" produce patriotism, bravery, simplicity and science ; and 
" that infinitely better for the order, security, and tranquil- 
** lity tltey will enjoy, by putting the executive power in one 
« hand, which it becomes their interest, as well as that of 
" the nobles, to watch and control."* 

* Adams's Def. v. 2. 387 & 388. 



100 PRINCIPLES OP THE POLICY OF THE U. STATES, 

This quotation contains the precise opinion, which it is 
the design of this essay to controvert. Dismissing Turgot's 
phantom of a single house of representatives, Mr. Adams 
considers the people as an order, electing only one branch 
of the legislature, having no control over a single execu- 
tive, and aided by nobles to watch and control this monarch ; 
for when the people have made a king to check nobles, 
these nobles are to join the people in checking the king. 
And the approbation of such a form of government is as 
unbounded, as the censure of every other is unequivocal. 
That, he asserts, will produce a long string of blessings ; 
others, specified calamities of great magnitude. Not a sin- 
gle defect is ascribed to the object of the eulogy, nor a 
single perfection to any other form. The words cannot be 
tortured to bring our policy within the sphere of the eulo- 
gy, nor to exclude it from that of the censure. And the 
English system is unequivocally preferred without liesita- 
Hon to all others. 

A shigle remark only will be made upon this encomium. 
The system of orders is said to produce security of proper- 
ty. But the system requires that property must be balanced 
among the three orders, or no balance of power can remain. 
* Wealth," says Mr. Adams, "is the machine for govern 
ing the world." How can this balance of property be in 
troduced or maintained, without invading property, for the 
indispensable purpose of enriching a king and some other 
interest, to make two orders ? It must be invaded by force or 
fraud. The frauds of superstition first collected the wealthy 
which created and fed an aristocratic al interest ; then it 
was acquired by the force of the feudal system ; and now it 
is drawn from the people by the frauds of paper and patron- 
age. Can any one hesitate to prefer the security of pro- 
perty under the system of the United States, to such secu- 
rity as this ? 

" A science certainly comprehends all the principles in 
« nature which belong to the subject. The principles in 
« nature which relate to government cauuH all be Riumi^ 



AM> OF THE *?m£XSH V&L1GT. 101 

u without a knowledge of the history of mankind. The 
" English constitution is the only one which has considered 
" and provided for all cases that are known to hare gene- 
« rally* indeed to hare always happened in the progress of 
** every nation $ it is therefore the only scientifical govern- 
" ment,"* 

66 Whenever the people have had any share in the exe- 
ii eutive, or more than one third part of the legislative, 
" they have always abused it, and rendered property inse- 
*' cure."f 

" But a mixed government produces and necessitates 
66 constancy in all its parts ; the king must be constant to 
u preserve his prerogatives; the senate must be constant to 
u preserve their share ; and the house theirs.":}: 

" It is therefore the true policy of the common people 
¥ to place the whole executive power in one man, to make 
« him a distinct order in the state, from whence arises an 
« inevitable jealousy between him and the gentlemen."§ 

Mr. Adams's third volume || contains a reference to the 
parties under our present general government, by the terms 
" constitutionalist and republican f 9 and in the same vo 
lume^f it is said, " that Lewis the 16th had the unrivalled 
glory of admitting the people to a share in the government;" 
an observation for which no ground existed, previously to 
the establishment of the present general constitution. This 
volume must therefore have been written or revised after 
the existence of that constitution ; of course, that instru- 
ment is entitled to share with the constitutions proposed by 
the title page to be defended, in the censures of these seve- 
ral quotations. 

One of these is an adjudication assigning literally to the 
« English constitution" the utmost conceivable political 
perfection ; and to every other, a specified comparative 
inferiority, with a considerable portion of actual worthless- 
ness. « The English constitution is the only one which las 

* Adams's def. v. 3. 368. t Adams's def. v. 3. 453. || p. 187- 
f do. v. 3. 391. § <te. v. 3. 460. f p. 426: 



i02 PRINCIPLES OF THE POLICY OF THE V. STATEfi, 

"considered and provided for all cases known to have 
« always happened in the progress of every nation." Com- 
parative preference could not have been more strongly ex- 
pressed. « It is the only scientifical government." A 
stronger expression of contempt for other forms of govern- 
ment could not have been used by a philosopher. 

The confinement of the people to an influence over a 
Third part of the legislature, the monarchical executive, 
and the independent senate, having the prerogatives of an 
order, are vital principles of the English system, and ap- 
plauded ; and that applause is an express censure of those 
vital principles of our policy, which extend the influence of 
the people far beyond the English limit, erect responsible 
executives short of monarchical power, and exclude the idea 
of prerogatived senatorial orders. 

The meaning of the term " mixed," frequently used in 
Mr. Adams's treatise, is defined by the third quotation so 
precisely, that the loosest imagination will be unable to mis- 
construe the author as intending by that expression to 
include the policy of the United States. He limits it to a 
mixture of ranks or orders, made up of king, lords and 
commons. A division of powers without an establishment 
of orders, is not then an object of Mr. Adams's contempla- 
tion, when he uses this term. 

Jealousy is often mentioned by Mr. Adams as the best 
effect of his system of balancing orders. In the last quota- 
tion, the jealousy of the common people against gentlemen, 
is used as a motive to propel them towards a king, for the 
purpose of acquiring this cardinal effect of the balances ; 
ziamely, jealousy between the king and the gentlemen. 

It has been stated, that a mixture of orders belonged to 
the class of, governments founded in the evil qualities of 
man ; and it is repeatedly asserted by Mr. Adams, that its 
fruit is jealousy. This is a tender term to convey an idea 
of the distrust, hatred and implacability, which have ever 
guided orders, possessed of the share of power and wealth 
yequired by Mr. Adams's system. The calamities he details, 



AND OF THE ENGLISH POLICY. iOS 

are collected from experiments of mixed orders, and display 
the consequences of the evil quality of jealousy, and the 
prospect of its becoming the fountain of good. This jea- 
lousy is graduated by the approach towards the object, on 
the attainment of which the perfection of Mr. Adams's sys- 
tem depends ; and the exact adjustment of a balance of 
power and wealth between political orders, begets the ut- 
most degree of its malignity $ it becomes deadly, like that 
between two pretenders to the throne. It produces effects, 
like those produced in England, by a balance of wealth and 
power between the crown and the nobility. As equality in 
wealth and power, or a perfect political balance, is the ut- 
most excitement of jealousy, so it is stifled by subordination ; 
and the farther a form of government recedes from Mr. 
Adams's point of perfection, the less it is exposed to the 
discord of a rivalry for dominion. As the violent struggles 
between the crown and nobles in England, demonstrate the 
consequences of an attainment of Mr. Adams's political 
balance ; so their long intermission demonstrates the con- 
sequences of a recession from bis point of perfection. It is 
simply the question whether two or three kings are better 
than one, on account of the jealousy with which the one case 
will be blessed, and its absence from the second. The poli- 
cy of the United States, by acknowledging the sovereignty 
of the people without a balance or a rival power, and by 
establishing a subordination to their opinion, has rejected 
the quality of jealousy, contended for by its defender. 

Mr. Adams's book abounds with the evils iniiicted on 
mankind by the contention of orders, but it omits to dis- 
play the evils of their union in England ; it opposes to its 
own facts a theory for their management, but omits to add 
that it has never succeeded ; and it allows to nations a capa- 
city for instituting and keeping in repair, an intricate equi- 
librium of power and wealth among orders, but denies thai 
they are capable of self government. 

The quotations demonstrate the enmity between tLe po- 
licy of the United States, and Mr. Adams's system ,• and a 



.10* PRIxNCIPLE^ OF THE POLICY OF THE U. STATES, 

yiew of the general structure of his treatise, will establish. 
its strict concurrence with the tenor of the quotations. Re- 
publieks, or governments without a monarch, are represent- 
ed as detestable ; and the more popular they are, the more 
detestable are they represented. Our policy is slightly 
mentioned in the first volume, thrown into the hack ground 
throughout the second, and spoken of in the third as an ex- 
periment unlikely to succeed. As Turgot's project of a 
single body of men exercising all power, is made the pre- 
text for a collateral attack upon our policy in the first vo- 
lume, Nedham's « Excellency of a free state, or the right 
constitution of a commonwealth," is resorted to for opening 
a direct attack upon it in the third. Turgot was unfriendly 
to orders, and Nedham wrote to keep out a dethroned king ; 
Mr. Adams assails them both. 

Marchamont Nedham wrote about one hundred and fifty 
years past. Political science at that time depended upon 
ancient experiments, and the disciples of democracy, aris- 
tocracy or monarchy, would of course be now exposed to 
many just criticisms, furnished by the defects of each form, 
as then understood and practised. But Nedham's treatise, 
and the American revolution, united in assailing the same 
limited monarchy, in the destruction of which, one failed 
and the other succeeded ; and Mr. Adams selects the un- 
successful combatant against the same foe, takes the side of 
the victorious enemy, and fights the battle over again. Li- 
mited monarchy is made to insult over Nedham's common- 
wealth, after having subdued it ; and the commonwealth of 
the United States, is not allowed to take the field against 
limited monarchy which that has subdued. Monarchy 
shrinks from an avowed controversy with an erect enemy, 
and is by Mr. Adams decreed a new triumph over a fallen 
one. However it may accord with the rules of war, to un- 
dermine the maiu fortress by getting possession of a weak 
outwork, it is questionable whether this military mode of 
reasoning, will be considered as the riarht road to truth 



AXD OF THE ENGLISH POLICY, 105 

The policy of the United States ought not to he forced 
into an alliance with either Turgot's or Nedham's project. 
It is itself the Champion, ready to engage the English sys- 
tem, fairly and openly, hand to hand ; nor ought the ghosts 
of these speculations, the one forgotten and the other un- 
known, to have been conjured up, for the purpose of trans- 
fixing that policy, under pretence of striking at shadows, 
and claiming for monarchy a victory whilst it flees from 
the contest. 

The war is carried on with shadows ; and by the help 
of definition, an attempt is made even to transfer the arms 
of these shadows to their adversary. If this can be effect- 
ed, the chief weapon, the distinguishing superiority of our 
policy, is also lost. Let us return to Mr. Adams. 

" In the science of legislation, there is a confusion of 
•< languages, as if men were but lately come from Babel. 
« Scarcely any two writers, much less nations, agree in 
« using words in the same sense. Such a latitude, it is 
46 true, allows a scope for politicians to speculate, like mer 
« chants with false weights, by making the same word 
" adored by one party and execrated by another."* 

Two extracts will be selected, to show how far Mr 
Adams has fulfilled the confidence which this just observa- 
tion is calculated to inspire ; one, containing a definition of 
a republick, the other of representation. Definition is in 
deed a false or a true weight. It discloses truth, or hides 
errour. It is a criminal, varnishing over law, to conceal 
his crime ; or an unprejudiced judge, seeking for a true 
construction. It is a torture of words to suit a system, and 
deceive the superficial ; or a mode of removing the mistakes 
arising from words, and extending our ideas to things. And 
it is as likely to complain of the unintelligible jargon pro- 
duced by a want of precision in terms, when it purposes to 
deceive by this jargon, as a Jew is to complain of false 
weights, when he offers his sweated coin, 

* Adams's dcf. v. 3, 157 158. 

IS 



i06 PRINCIPLES OP THE POXTCY OF THE IT. STATES, 

" Others again, more rationally, define a republick to 
« signify only a government, in which all men, rich and 
" poor, magistrates and subjects, officers anid people, mas- 
" ters and servants, the first citizen and the last, are equally 
" subject to the laws. This indeed appears to be the true, 
" and only true definition of a republick."* 

" An uncertainty of law" is a " glorious" object to ava- 
ricious lawyers. " An uncertainty of republicanism," would 
be an object, not less desirable to ambitious politicians. A 
definition, which produces uncertainty as to what republi- 
canism is, will excite and aid the views of ambition, just 
as an uncertainty of law excites and aids the views of ava- 
rice. It is therefore highly important to consider this de- 
finition of Mr. Adams. 

The analysis contended for in this essay, divides govern- 
ments into two classes, distinguished by the moral elements, 
good and evil. And the terms « republick and common- 
wealth," have been used to convey an idea of a government, 
which, being founded in good moral principles, or princi- 
ples both exciting good and restraining evil qualities, will 
produce publick, common, or national benefit. But if « the 
subjection of all to law" constitutes a republick, this idea of 
the term must be surrendered, and we must look out for 
some other, by which to make the reader comprehend the 
idea, of a form of government founded in good moral prin- 
ciples, and producing publick, common or national benefit. 

A code of laws may be good or bad ; and if bad, it is 
morally impossible that a subjection to such a code, can 
constitute a government founded in good moral principles. 
But according to Mr. Adams, equal subjection to any code 
of laws, constitutes a definition of a republick ; if so, it fol- 
lows, that this term gives us no idea of the principles or 
operation, of any government : and is equally pertinent to 
describe those calculated to dispense evil to the publick* 
as those calculated to dispense good. 

* AdamsV def. v. 3. 159. 



AND OF THE ENGLISH POLICT. 107 

Law may be enacted by a faction, to strip a nation, am! 
enrich itself $ and the faction may find an interest in sub- 
jecting to law, the individuals composing itself, equally 
with other citizens. The Doge and nobility of Venice, thp 
East-India company and stock faction of England, are evi- 
dences of this assertion. 

A code of laws may operate partially, in such modes, as 
the establishment of privileged orders or hierarchies ; or 
by frittering away publick rights by law charters, to indi- 
viduals or corporations, so as to reduce the majority of the 
nation to misery and wretchedness. Yet the bishop would 
be subject to law in receiving his benefice and his tythes ? 
the labourer, in paying them ; a nobility is subject to law 
in exercising its privileges ,• a corporation, in growing rich 
by the aid of its charter ; a bank, in collecting from a na- 
tion, usury upon nominal money ; and a king, in receiving 
a million, and expending thirty millions annually in corrup- 
tion and patronage, at the national expense. Here are 
kings, bishops, nobility and corporations, all subject to law \ 
but the laws are partial, unjust and oppressive. 

There is no difficulty in framing Jaws, so as to oppress 
one portion of a community for the benefit of another ; and 
yet every citizen may be subject to the laws, whilst the sub- 
jection of some will consist of acquisition or benefit, and of 
others, of loss or injury ; and thus property to a vast amount 
may be annually transferred. Some may be combined in a 
priesthood, to aid a government in oppressing others ; pri- 
vileges may be conferred on some, to the injury and degra- 
dation of others ; some may by law be excused from pub- 
lick duties, so as to increase them upon others, as in the 
exemption of the nobility and clergy under the French mo 
narchy from certain taxes ; and some may by laws be ena- 
bled even to corrupt the governrient at the cost and charges 
of the people, as the paper and the executive orders of 
England. 

In all these cases, and in a multitude of others which 
will occur to the reader, an equal subjection to the law. 



10S PRINCIPLES OP THE POLICY OF THE U. STATES, 

constitutes the only true and genuine republick, according 
to Mr. Adams ; a definition equivalent to an assertion, that 
it is not the justice or partiality, the moderation or oppres- 
siveness of laws, which furnish an idea of liberty or slavery, 
of a republick or a tyranny, but merely the execution of 
law, bad or good, just or unjust. 

According to this definition, all forms of government, 
which produce a particular effect of government, that is, 
u an equal subjection to the laws," instantly become repub- 
licks, how widely soever they may differ in structure or 
principles ; and the same form, may sometimes be a repub- 
lick, and sometimes not, as fluctuations in the equal execu- 
tion of law are produced, by the passions of individuals, or 
the arts of factions, without any change in the structure of 
the government. So soon as it is settled, that effects are to 
alter the names of causes, without altering their nature or 
form, the term « republick" can no longer convey an idea 
of a government, unless it is in operation ; because, as the 
title of every form to that epithet, would depend upon its 
effect in producing "an equal subjection to law," so until 
this effect appears in the operation of a government, it could 
never be known, whether it was a republick, an aristocracy 
or a monarchy. Politicians, to the inquiry « what kind of 
government are you erecting ?" must answer like the paint- 
er spoken of by Cervantes, who being asked what he was 
painting, replied ? " a cock or a fox, just as it happens." 

A partial execution of law by one party or faction upon 
another, would produce an unequal subjection to law, which 
must be detected and destroyed, to bring back such an 
erring government within the terms of the definition. It 
deprives us of the vernacular idea annexed to the phrases 
«* republick and monarchy," and for the question " is this a 
republick or a monarchy?" substitutes an inquiry, « whether 
all the citizens are equally subject to the laws ?" 

Without having seen the definition, an Englishman be- 
ing asked, under what form of government he lived, would 
have answered, " a monarchy f 9 and to the same question, 



AND OT THE ENGLISH POXlClTo 109 

an American would have answered w a republ iek," But 
this new dialect may make such answers improper* In 
England, the government party say " the laws govern." 
According to the definition, these monarchists must allow 
that their government is republican, and themselves repub- 
licans ; in America, the party which called itself republican? 
believed that the sedition law was partially executed, so as 
to produce an unequal subjection to law ; by the definition, 
this party must then have denied that our form of govern- 
ment was republican, whilst they were avowing an affection 
for it because it was so. We cannot therefore discern, how 
this definition is calculated to diminish the confusion of po- 
litical dialect, or to establish an accurate idea of the term 
«* republick," capable of becoming a fixed standard against 
the fraudulent use of it by ambition and deceit. Let us 
examine if more certainty and perspicuity is displayed in 
the following quotation. 

" An hereditary limited monarch is the representative of 
*« the whole nation, for the management of the executive 
** power, as much as an house of representatives, as one 
« branch of the legislature, and as guardian of tfre publick 
« purse ; and a house of lords too, or a standing senate, re- 
" presents the nation for other purposes, viz : as a watch 
" set upon both the representatives and the executive pow- 
« er. The people are the fountain and original of the pow- 
* 6 er of kings and lords, governours and senates, as well as 
« the house of commons, or assembly of representatives : and 
" if the people are sufficiently enlightened to see all the dan- 
f( gers that surround them, they will always he represented 
" by a distinct personage to manage the whole executive 
'* power; a distinct senate to be guardians of property 
<* against levellers for the purposes of plunder, to be a re- 
i 4 positary of the national tradition of publick maxims, cus- 
66 toms and manners, and to be controllers in turn both of 
" Kings and their ministers on one side, and the rcpresenta- 
6i lives of the people on the other, when either discover a dis- 
" position to do wrongs and a distinct house of reprcsenta- 



HO PRINCIPLES OP THE POLICY OP THE V. STATES, 

" tives, to be the guardians of the publick purse, and to pro- 
*< tect the people in their turn, against both kings and no- 
« bles."* 

Having sunk republicanism in subjection to law, Mr* 
Adams here sinks representation in hereditary orders. By 
the definition of " republiek" any form of government may 
constitute it ,• and by this definition of representation, here- 
ditary power in every shape, is as much a representative 
power, as that elected by the people. Let us consider whe- 
ther this definition tends to introduce an unambiguous poli- 
deal dialect, and to secure the people against deception. 

It was said, that Mr. Adams had attempted, by defini- 
tion, to rob of their arms the shadows of his enmity, and to 
transfer these arms to their adversary ; and that if this 
could be effected, the chief weapons and distinguishing supe- 
riorities of our policy would be also lost. These shadows, 
are Turgot's chamber and Nedham's commonwealth ; the 
reality upon which this attempt will bear, is the policy of 
the United States. 

The distinguishing superiorities of our policy, are, the 
sovereignty of the people ; a republican government, or a 
government producing publick or national good ; and a tho- 
rough system of responsible representation. All these, Mr. 
Adams transplants into his system of monarchy and privi- 
leged orders, from the policy of the United States, as Ma- 
homet transplanted several of the best principles of Christi- 
anity into his system of religion. " The people," says he, 
" are the fountain and original of the power of kings, lords, 
governours and senates, as well as the house of commons, or 
assembly of representative s." Thus he seizes upon our 
principle of « the sovereignty of the people" and appropri- 
ates it to the use of his system of kings and lords. He as- 
serts that, an hereditary limited monarch and a house of 
lords are as much the representatives of the nation as an 
house of representatives elected by the people. Thus he seiz- 
es upon our principle of responsible representation, and 

* Adams's Defence, v. 3. 367. 



J£SD OE THE ENGLISH POLICY. Ill 

bestows that also upon his system of kings and lords. And 
not contented with depriving our policy of these defences* 
and bestowing them upon a rival policy, to which they do 
not belong, he even robs it of its name, by defining a rcpub- 
lick to be only " an equal subjection to law," and transfers 
that also to monarchy :■— Leaving the policy of the United 
States, without principles, and without a name, by which it 
may be spoken of, or distinguished from the English sys- 
tem. Is this " a language of Babel," or one calculated to 
be understood ? Is it calculated to furnish ambitious politi- 
cians " with false weights," or to come at truth ? 

In his effort to humour the publick opinion of the United 
States, in favour of < ( national sovereignty and representa- 
tion," Mr. Adams lost sight of that, to prove the existence 
of " a natural aristocracy." One of these doctrines asserts 
" that the people are sovereign," or in Mr. Adams's words, 
" the fountain and original of the power of kings and lords ;" 
the other, " that nature creates an order above and inde- 
pendently of the people." And to complete the confusion 
arising from thus confounding contradictory principles, Mr. 
Adams in the last quotation, has arranged kings and gover- 
norus, lords and senators, in the class of representatives, and 
thus after taking from us words, takes away objects also, by 
which we may know our system of government, from that 
of king, lords and commons. 

If the system of balancing power and property, contend- 
ed for by Mr. A<lams> would not be exploded by a disinge- 
nuous defence ; an effort to convince the people of the Uni- 
ted States, that their policy is the English system, ought to 
have no more influence upon the question, than an effort to 
convince the English nation, that their system was the policy 
of the United States. Considering such attempts as rather 
designed to ridicule, than mislead ignorance or preposses- 
sion, I will exhibit the essential difference between the two 
forms of government, in a view, heretofore transiently no- 
ticed, and hereafter to be impressed, as occasions occur. 



112 PRINCIPLES OF THE POLICY OF THE V. STATES, 

In the last quotation, Mr. Adams recommends bis noble, 
distinct or permanent Senate, « as guardians of jjroperty 
against levellers ;" and in a previous quotation he observes, 
that «f whenever the people have had any share in the exe- 
cutive, or more than one third part of the legislative, they 
have always abused it, and rendered property insecure .-" — 
Thus excluding the people from any share in the executive, 
and any influence over the Senate, (although the king and 
the nobility are, as he says, their representatives,) as the 
only means of protecting property or checking levellers. 

The love of property possesses almost an unbounded in- 
iluence over the human mind. It is therefore an engine to 
which avarice and ambition will forever resort to effect their 
purposes ; and eyevy institution designed to make the mass 
of a nation poorer by enriching itself, will invariably avow 
a contrary intention, for the purpose of inducing the nation 
to fall into the snare. This is sometimes baited, with a pre- 
tence, that the people will be abundantly reimbursed in hea- 
ven, for the money drawn from them to enrich a hierarchy ; 
at others, with the delusion, that they are reimbursed for 
the wealth drawn from them to enrich paper corporations, 
by an enhanced price for their labour ; even for such pro- 
duets as are priced by a foreign demand. 

The fear of losing property, is as strong as the hope of 
obtaining it. For this reason, the grossest abuses artfully 
ally themselves with real and honest property ; and endea- 
vour to excite its apprehension, when attempts are made to 
correct them, by exclaiming against the invasion of proper- 
ty and against levelism, and by deceiving the publick with 
fraudulent epithets. 

These, we shall endeavour to prove, are precisely the 
grounds taken by Mr. Adams, when he boldly charges ail 
nations, having any share in their own government beyond 
a third part of the legislative power, with "rendering 
property insecure 5" when he proposes a noble senate as 
" guardians of property ;" and when he endeavours to draw 
upon those who approve of extending the power of the 



AND OF THfc ENGLISH POLICY- US 

people beyond his limitation, the odium attached to the 
epithet " levellers." And we shall endeavour to prove, that 
the charges of levelism^ and rendering property insecure, so 
repeatedly and profusely urged against republican princi- 
ples throughout his book, do really recoil upon himself, 
and adhere to his own system. 

The " safety of property" is the very point, by which it 
is allowed that the reader ought to be determined, in bes~ 
towing a preference upon our policy or the English system. 
Our manners do not thirst for blood ; it is the thirst of 
avarice and ambition for wealth and power, that we have to 
wit]] stand. 

To understand the question, we ought previously to set- 
tie a satisfactory idea of property. Here it is probable that 
a disagreement will occur, between the disciples of corpora- 
tion, monopoly and orders, and myself. It is acknowledged* 
that I do not include under the idea of property, any artifi- 
cial establishment, which subsists by taking away property ; 
such as hierarchical, kingly, noble, official and corporate 
possessions, incomes and privileges ; and that I consider 
those possessions as property, which are fairly gained by 
talents and industry, or are capable of subsisting, without 
taking property from others bylaw. 

If this definition is correct, an invasion of property con- 
stitutes the essential quality of Mr, Adams's system. A 
king, a nobility and a hierarchy, cannot subsist without pro- 
perty, and this property must be taken away in some mode 
from others. The system requires a balance of property, 
as the only mode of balancing power ; or, to use the epithet 
applied by Mr. Adams to those who differ from him, pro- 
perty and power must be levelled among three orders, and 
this level must be kept up, or the system falls into ruin. 
Therefore the supposed two orders cannot preserve a politi- 
cal existence, without constantly receiving the profits of two 
thirds of the property in a nation. This requires a regular 
system for invading private property to sustain a govern- 
ment consisting of balanced orders. A nation must toil like 

16 



il% PRINCIPLES OF THE POLICE OP THE XJ. STATES, 

Sisyphus, whilst an invisible Denver must eternally defeat 
their labours, to keep this indispensable balance steady. 

Nobility, separate interests or orders, have in all ages 
taken root and nourished, in an invasion of property. Some 
mode by which this is effected, will occur as an indissoluble 
adjunct to every such order or interest; as in the fraudu- 
lent division of conquered lands, which reared and fed the 
Roman patricians and feudal barons ; in the sale of indul- 
gences and other frauds of superstition, which reared and 
fed the popish hierarchy; and in the system of paper find 
patronage, which reared and feeds the English monied 
interest, and allies it with the crown, from a consciousness 
of delinquency in its perpetual invasion of property. 

Supposing the charge exhibited against governments, 
under the national control, to be true ; and admitting that 
they do tend towards levelism ; it would then become ne- 
cessary to compute, which species of levelism, that of divi- 
ding property between three orders according to Mr. A- 
dams's system, or that of dividing property among all the 
individuals of a nation according to the supposed tendency, 
would prod ace the most injustice or misery. The first kind 
of levelism, requires a perpetual balance, only to be obtain- 
ed and supported, by an artificial transfer (either fraudulent 
or forcible) of two thirds of the national income, to two 
orders consisting of very few persons. This involves a per- 
petual invasion of the property of the order, comprising 
almost the whole nation, to the extent of two thirds. And 
an impoverishment of individuals, with all its calamities up- 
on mind and body, follows such an invasion, to a vast ex- 
tent ; suffered, not for the purpose of supplying the wants 
of the two orders, or doing them any good, but merely for 
the political object of establishing a balance of power upon 
this balance of property. 

The guardianship of property derived from the system 
of orders, must be paid for according to its essential princi- 
ples, by two thirds of the property of the people ; a price, 
one would think, which ought to secure fidelity in dischave- 



AXD OF THE ENGLISH POLICY. 115 

ing the trust. Instead of this, the system does not admit of 
the remaining third being rendered more valuable by indus- 
try. For should the third left in the hands of the people* 
be improved up to the value of the two thirds, transferred 
to the other two orders, it would destroy the balance "of 
power. Hence the system requires the acquisitions of in- 
dustry to be taken away and transferred, as they appear, to 
keep up its vital principle of " a balance of property." 

This is effected in England by the aid of paper and pat* 
ronage. The portion of property held by the people, began 
to grow as soon as perpetuities were abolished, and excited 
the efforts of avarice and ambition, to transfer to them- 
selves the acquisitions of industry ; to effect this object, re- 
course was had to the fraud of paper and patronage, so well 
calculated to goad on industry, and to pillage her gains. The 
levelism of property among three orders, created by perpe- 
tuities, domains, prerogatives, and tenures (which constitu- 
ted the essence of the feudal system), had been destroyed by 
the acquisitions of the popular order, and in its place was 
invented what may be called " the perpetual level of pro- 
perty," by the perpetual motion of paper patronage and 
taxation. It was a discovery of the political longitude for 
hereditary and stock navigators. This perpetual motion, 
being regulated by these navigators, they can accelerate ov 
retard its velocity, so as to maintain a perpetual level, by 
a regular transfer of the profit of labour and industry, from 
the mass of a nation, to themselves, an inconsiderable sec- 
tion of it. Thus, in fact, reducing Mr. Adams's orders to 
two only, those who lose property and those who receive it ; 
and producing the tyranny which he justly contends will 
result from one order governing another. 

This attempt to level or balance property among orders, 
has been concealed in all ages, by charging those who op- 
pose it with an intention of equalising, levelling or balanc- 
ing property among individuals; a species of levelism which 
has seldom appeared in any shape, would bo temporary if 
attempted, and is impracticable. 



116 PRINCIPLES OP THE POLICY OF THE U. STATES, 

If levelism, balancing or equality was practicable, (for 
the words are the same, however, as Mr. Adams observes, 
they may be made to be adored hy one party and execrated 
by another,) the merits of the different modes would appear 
by extending an idea already stated. By the system for 
equalising property among orders, one child gets a third of 
the whole, one hundred and fifty another third, and eleven 
millions nine hundred and ninety nine thousand, eight hun- 
dred and forty nine children, the remaining third ; by that 
for equalising property among individuals, each child would 
receive an equal share. The first system of equality, by a 
distribution excessively oppressive upon individuals, excites 
ambition, avarice, and universal malignity, and all the train 
of evil moral qualities annexed to luxury and poverty ; the 
second system of equality, would produce all the evils of 
sloth and ignorance. 

It is admitted that a greater portion of a nation will re- 
ceive a share, by the paper and patronage system for level- 
ling property, on account of the necessity of extending cor- 
ruption to defend a fraud, relatively to the extension of 
knowledge ; and that this multiplication of chances for a 
share, operates as a spur to labour and industry, as the 
efforts of twelve millions of persons would be more vigour- 
ously excited by the enrichment of fifty thousand than of 
one hundred and fifty individuals. But the more avarice is 
thus excited, the more oppression becomes necessary to ob- 
tain the means of its gratification ; an idea furnishing the 
ground for a comparison between the feudal and the paper 
aristocracy. 

Whether the reader shall hold in most detestation the 
system of levelling property among orders or among indi- 
viduals, is unimportant to the question proposed for his con- 
sideration. And the subject is only submitted to him that 
he may digcern the ingenuity of the first species of iniquity, 
in endeavouring to crouch from his eye behind the second. 
Conscious that it is the policy of the United States to pro- 
tect property against both these modes of invading it 9 the 



AND 0* THE ENGXISH POtlCTo 11T 

mode of balancing it among orders, artfully endeavours to 
excite an odium against that policy, by charging it with a 
tendency towards the mode of balancing it among indivi- 
duals, hoping that a recoil of publick opinion from one 
species of iniquity, may throw the nation into the other. 

The source of the charge excites distrust. It is brought 
forward by the system of levelling property among orders. 
The accusers are the witnesses. And if these accusers and 
witnesses succeed, their reward is a real two thirds of the 
wealth and power of the United States, for defeating an 
ideal balance of property among individuals. The people 
are gravely advised by Mr. Adams, to transfer two thirds 
of their property to two orders, and to keep themselves by 
perpetual taxation, under a perpetual incapacity of recover- 
ing it, for the preservation of the balance of power among 
orders, lest they themselves should adopt the visionary pro- 
ject of balancing property among individuals. A perpetual 
balance of property among orders, is the remedy proposed 
against a transitory project for balancing it among individu- 
als. The temptations exciting a division of property among 
individuals, are feeble ; hence it lias no advocates, and hence 
in our present circumstances, it never will have advocates* 
Those exciting its division among orders, are powerful ; 
hence it has advocates, and hence the danger of property 
lurks behind that project. 

Property, like liberty, is only to be secured upon the 
broad basis of publick will. When hereditary orders or se- 
perate interests, tell a nation that it is an enemy to its own 
liberty, but that liberty will be safe in their care, it is done 
with a design to rob the nation of liberty ; and when these 
hereditary orders or separate interests tell a nation, that 
property can only be made secure by investing them with 
two thirds of it, it is done to rob the nation of property. 

A specifick balance of property among orders, or sepa- 
rate interests, in the present state of commerce and man- 
ners, cannot be effected, by assigning to each order or inte- 
rest a third part of the land held by a nation ; and hf>iee it 



IIS PRINCIPLES OF THE POLICY OF THE U. STATES, 

is obvious, that a landed order, or aristocracy, cannot be 
established. As land itself cannot be thus balanced, the 
only remaining mode of effecting this indispensable object 
to the system of orders, is taxation. Those who receive 
the transfers of wealth made by taxation, and not those who 
-supply them, must constitute the order or separate interest. 
A cannot be made a nobleman by giving property to B. Ma- 
ny conclusions ensue. The objects of paper and patronage 
an England, receive the benefit of the balance of property, 
produced by taxation— the modern mode of managing this 
;balance ; therefore those objects, and not the titled nobility, 
constitute the real order or separate interest in England. 
Property is balanced by taxing land and labour, not by a di- 
vision of land; and therefore land cannot be the basis of an 
aristocracy. Like all other property, it loses by the balance 
of property maintained by taxation ; and it is the order 
which gains, and not that which loses, which invariably con- 
stitutes the aristocracy. An aristocracy, therefore, hy the 
modern mode of creating it, cannot consist of a landed inte- 
rest, a manufacturing interest, a professional interest, or of 
any species of interest, that excepted which receives the 
property annually collected by taxation, charters and privi- 
leges. It is the share of property received, which conveys 
the share of power, and produces the balance of both. Cor- 
ruption, charters, patronage, pensions and paper systems, 
are the channels through which the property annually ba- 
lanced by taxation, is distributed. Therefrom the distribu- 
tees derive a power, enabling them to do what a titled order 
would in vain attempt ; to defend themselves and their king 
or factor, against all other interests and orders. 

Let us now proceed to consider the examples in relation 
to his system, drawn by Mr. Adams from the governments 
of the middle age. 

Mr. Adams affects to despise theory, and to prove all 
his conclusions by experience. Without estimating the dif- 
ference between the savage and the civilized ; the supersti- 
tious, and the enlightened ; a city and a great country; he 



ksJSi* 01?*'rHK ENGjLISH POLICY. il& 

reasons as if every situation and all circumstances,' moral 
and physical, demanded the same political regirnen. The 
manners, the colour, and the social qualities, o f the brute 
creation, are ch anged by education ; is reason condemned? 
to persist in errot irs, from wMch instinct Yrks in time (legre* 
escaped? His examples are extracted in the second and 
third volumes, at great length, from the Italian republic-US'. 
To be guided by t hese, we must shut our eyes upon the day" 
light shining arou nd, and dive after our ehai •aeter and ca- 
pacity into the ca^ erns of antiquity. Can any ingenuity in- 
duce us to believe, that a picture of human depravity and 
ignorance, during the middle age, is our picti ire? In consi- 
dering this rosary of causes, it will hardly h e overlooked, 
that Mr. Adams I las been as evidently a the* wist, as in as- 
signing power to tittle, and forgetting to assig n it to wealth. 
These cases an 3 confined to the thirteen fch, fourteenth 
and fifteenth centut ies. We relinquish the i ise of the deep 
ignorance with wbie h these centuries had be wi overspread 
j the recent irrupt ions and conquests of bi irbarians, and 
will endeavour to rea son in a mode more eoi telusive. 

Mr. Adams consi ders Florence as afford ing an experi- 
ment of the most wei. ght. He enumerates s undry evils en- 
dured by that city, ax 'd infers that his syste m would have 
]>revented them. Th« e inference is drawn, n ot from a com- 
parison between the government of Flore nee, and other 
forms existing at the same period, which ? night have fur- 
nished probable eonel usions ; but from a comparison be- 
tween governments \\h ich existed at period 5 extremely dis- 
tant from each other. Parallels between contemporaries, 
will be allowed to fun oish a sounder infere nee. His histo- 
ry of Florence comme nees in the year 121 $. The parlia- 
ment of England reeei ved the shape of kin >, lords and com- 
mons, as far back as tt «at year ; indeed, an act of parliament 
appears to have been j sleaded, made in the reign of William 
the conqueror. From hence to the end of the fifteenth cen- 
tury, when Mr. Adaa is's history of Ital ian miseries ends, 
the balance of powc r and property in England ^>uu>ng 



J.20 PRINCIPLES OF THE POLICY OF THE U. STATES, 

orders, was more consonant to his theory than at present. 
The representation of the plebeian order, was more equal 
at that time than now ; because inhabited and not depopula- 
ted boroughs were represented. Property was placed by 
perpetuities in a settled state of division and balance among 
orders ; this division and balance is now superseded by its 
division through commerce and alienation among individu- 
als, and by the balance of taxation between payers and re- 
ceivers. The titled order then held a real share of power, 
attracted by their share of property ; now, power is attract- 
ed from title by a richer order or interest. 

Here was strong ground for a sober inqwirer after truth. 
The contemporary evils generated by the king? lords and 
commons of England, and by the Italian r«epublicks, ought 
to have been minutely detailed and compared. Then the 
preponderating mass might have been discovered ; and then 
similar evils might have been referred to some common 
«ause. 

The feuds and wars among the barons, between these 
and the kings, between the kings and the people, between 
pretenders to the crown, between the nation and its neigh- 
bours ; catalogues of executions, murders, confiscations, ba- 
nishments ; seizures of church lands and monasteries : chan- 
ges of religion and persecutions, bego tten by amours, or 
bigotry ; and all the effects of prerogative, privilege and 
feudal tenure, ought to have been made to face the calami- 
ties of the Italian republicks, to enable us to determine 
which were most hideous. 

These calamities brought face to face, would have exhi- 
bited a resemblance not to be obliterated. And the chief 
distinction between them, would have consisted of more art, 
civilization and knowledge, among the J Italians than among 
the English, infused by their greater p( >rtion of republican- 
ism. From the resemblance, however, 'would have resulted 
an illustration of an analysis which supposes, that oil 
moral effects are produced by monarchy, aristocracy ot 
democracy, either simple or mixed, The democracies 



AND Ol? TILE ENGLISH POLICY. 121 

aristocracies, monarchies and mixtures, both of England 
and Italy, produced evil effects. In both countries ranks or 
orders existed during the three centuries to which Mr. 
Adams confines himself. 

Admitting an exchange of forms of government to have 
taken place, between England and Italy, an exchange of 
contemporary evils or effects might have also followed ; and 
it is not improbable but that Italy would have made the 
worst of the bargain. Her little republicks, would have 
been converted into little kingdoms | and the rivalry and am- 
bition of neighbouring commonwealths, would have been 
exchanged for the rivalry and ambition of neighbouring 
kings. The little commonwealths existed more centuries, 
than the kingdoms would have done years ; if we may judge 
by the invariable fate of a cluster of small kings. Is not 
this a proof of the superior excellence or moderation, of 
the republican, to the monarchical principle ? 

The numerous disunited territorial divisions of Italy, 
was the substratum for her republican experiment; a terri- 
torial union, of the English experiment for balancing pro- 
perty and orders. Italy was distracted by the mutual an- 
noyance of jealous neighbours, and the intrigues of the 
Pope and the Emperour. England was strong in its ex- 
tent, fortified by nature, and less exposed to foreign influ- 
ence. Under these disadvantages, during the three centu- 
ries we are estimating, Italy outstript England in arts, 
knowledge and wealth; and probably saved the science and 
civilization of the world, from being lost in those ages of 
darkness. Her evils were inferior to those of England, mi- 
der the pressure of greater local difficulties ; and her pros- 
perity greater, with fewer local advantages. But the tinc- 
ture of republicanism was infinitely stronger in the Italian 
forms of government, than in the English. 

There existed however, it must be admitted, a strong re- 
semblance between the evils suffered by both, which excites 
a reasonable suspicion, that these evils flowed from some 
cause, also common to both. The structure of the govern- 

17 



123 PRINCIPLES OF THE POLICY OF THE F. STATES, 

ments was dissimilar, therefore this structure could not 
have been the cause. But a similarity existed between En- 
gland and Italy, in two material circumstances during these 
centuries : ignorance and nobility. England and Italy were 
both in a state of turbulence and misery during the con- 
templated period. The balances of England, would there- 
fore have been an ineffectual experiment to care the cala- 
mities of Italy ; and the mixed republicanism of Italy, as 
ineffectual to cure the calamities of England. The evil 
moral causes, ignorance and nobility, being common to both 
countries, would still have produced evil effects, had they 
been transposed. 

From the termination of the fifteenth century, the two 
chief calamities which had previously afflicted Europe, 
diminished in malignancy. Printing gradually mitigated 
the effects of ignorance ; and commerce and alienation, gra- 
dually destroyed the balance of property and power among 
orders. To defend noble or privileged orders by a compa- 
rison between Italy, before the discovery of printing and 
under a feudal monopoly of land, and England, enlightened 
by that art, and relieved from this monopoly, is reasoning 
thus : As England, after the power and influence of her 
nobility were destroyed by alienation and the diffusion of 
knowledge, became happier than Italy, whilst afflicted with 
powerful noble orders, therefore noble orders are blessings, 

The amelioration of the human condition, though gene- 
ral to Europe, w as not precisely the same in each country. 
It seems in a great measure to have been graduated by the 
thermometer of nobility, and to have proceeded with cele- 
rity or tardiness, in proportion to the imbecility or strength 
of noble orders. 

In Russia and Poland, the nobility long retained proper- 
ty and power, and the people, oppression and misery. la 
France and Germany, the nobility retained more of its pro- 
perty and power, than in England, and the people were 
more oppressed. In England, nobility received the first and 
hardest blow, and she suddenly overtook and surpassed 



AND OF THE ENGLISH POLICY. 123 

several countries in prosperity, which were previously ahead 
of her. And in the revolution of France, the abolition of 
nobility, made room for a wonderful national energy and 
superiority, which will not be forgotten by politicians. 

The history of England supports these ideas. The 
reign of king John ended in 1216, and that of Henry the se- 
venth in 1509, so that the collection of Italian troubles made 
by Mr. Adams, is contemporary with the troubles of En- 
gland during the reigns of John, Henry 3d, Edward 1st, 
Edw. 2d, Edw. 3d, Richard 2d, Henry 4th, 5th and 6th* 
Edw. 4th, Rich. 3d, and Henry 7th. 

During these reigns, the nobility were rich and power- 
ful, and the troubles of England, dreadful and unremitting. 
Henry the seventh began to break their power by diminish- 
ing their property, and the situation of the nation began to 
mend, As commerce and alienation proceeded in this work, 
the situation of the nation grew better ; and since the new 
project of annually balancing property by taxation, has been 
substituted for the old project of a specifick landed balance, 
the parish poor and the publick debt, the poverty and the 
luxury, the vices and the wretchedness of the nation have 
all increased. 

Powerful and wealthy orders, in no country under any 
form of government, have existed in union with national 
happiness; a system therefore, which proposes so to balance 
them, as to compel them to be subservient to it, is not ex- 
perimental, and only a theory. Let us consider, whether 
it is entitled even to the weight of naked theory. 

If Mr. Adams's theory existed in England at any period, 
before the sixteenth century, it did not produce effects which 
can invite us to adopt it ; and afterwards, the political pro- 
gress of England received its direction from the assaults 
made upon the power and property of the nobility by Henry 
the seventh, and by alienation, commerce, paper and patron- 
age. The system therefore is made worse than naked.theory, 
by inimical experience. The miseries of the first period, 
were suddenly diminished, and the effects of the second gra- 



f$& PEINCIPiES OF THE POLICY OF THE U. STATES, 

dually produced, by successful combatants against nobility, 
the corner stone of his system. 

The animation of defending it, by the experience of the 
Italian republicks, is still more remarkable than the use 
made of the experience of England. The history of Flo- 
rence, says Mr. Adams, is the history of them all. This is 
only a detail of the treasons and oppressions of a turbulent 
nobility. We hear constantly of the Boundelmonti, Uberti, 
Amadei, Donati, Cherchi, Keri, Biarchi, Medecei, Albigi, 
and others, with their castles ; of publick calamities ori- 
ginating in the ambition, wickedness or folly of a nobleman ; 
of confederations between orders, and between noble fami- 
lies ; and of efforts and concessions on the part of die people 
to restrain these disorders. Whilst these disorders are 
ascribed to the nobility, Mr. Adams imputes them to the 
people ; merely because they did not try exactly, as he 
thinks, his balance of orders; and felicitating his country 
in haying discovered a remedy for these disorders, he is 
willing to rebuild castles for nobles, or to erect the more 
impregnable fortress of paper and patronage for aristocracy, 
to evince the dexterity with which the calamities endured 
by Florence from nobility, may be averted from the United 
States. Nobility A\as the source of evil to Florence ; Flo- 
rence therefore furnishes no experiment, shewing nobility 
to have been a source of good. A system to convert nobility 
into a blessing, is worse than theory, if experience exhibits 
it as a curse. A few other quotations from the book of ex- 
perience are necessary to fix its character. 

" Machiavel," says Mr. Adams, (i informs him, that 
« the government of Florence was fallen into great disorder 
« and misrule ; for the Guelph nobility, being the majority, 
" were grown so insolent, and stood in so little awe of the 
< ( magistracy, that though many murders and other vio- 
" lences were daily committed, yet the criminals daily 
" escaped with impunify? through favour of one or the other 
" of the nobles."^ 

* Adams's Def. v. 2, 18.* 



AND OF THE EtfGUSH POlIC? . 125 

" But the behaviour of the nobility was quite the con - 
« trary," says Maehiavel, « for as they always disdained 
« the thoughts of equality, even when they lived a private 
<* life, so now they were in the magistracy, they thought to 

# domineer over tlie whole city, and every day produced 

* fresh instances of their pride and arrogance ; which ex- 
« ceedingly galled the people, when they saw they had de- 
" posed one tyrant to make room for a thousand." 

" All this," says Mr. Adams, " one may safely believe 
" to be exactly true, but what then ? Why, they ought to 
" have separated the nobles from the commons, and made 
« each independent of the other."* 

These nobles were tried « in private life and in the ma- 
gistracy," in both they retained the vicious qualities of the 
vicious principle, nobility. True, says Mr. Adams, but 
they were not tried according to my theory. Many at- 
tempts in various modes, some approaching to his theory, 
were unsuccessfully made in Italy to gratify or purify the 
principle, nobility; all failed; it continued to exhibit vicious 
qualities. At this period, the nobles in England were sepa- 
rated from and independent of the house of commons, and 
that house of the nobles ; yet the vicious qualities of nobi- 
lity caused a multitude of disorders. Mr. Adams admits 
the insolence of nobility, and the disorders it produces ; his 
remedy to cure insolence and ambition, is power and wealth. 

The nobles of Poland, were rich and powerful ; they 
ruined their country, rather than soften the condition of the 
people. Those of Russia receive districts with the inhabit- 
ants as donations from an emperour. But, says Mr. Adams, 
" hereditary kings and nobles are as much representatives 
of the people as those they elect." In Russia they represent 
them as part of their estates. Thus the feudal English ba- 
rons represented the people, whilst possessed of their baron- 
ies ; now, by selling them to the crown. We see in all 
instances, that nobility, with great wealth and power, is a 
tyrant ; with little, a traitor ; and that orders or interests, 

* Adams's Def. v. % 46. 



126 PRINCIPLES OP THE POLICY OF THE U. STATES, 

subsisting on the people, invariably oppress or sell them \ 
for how can they otherwise subsist ? 

Mr. Adams allows wealth to be the great machine for 
governing the world, and yet he makes no distinction be- 
tween a rich order or interest, and a poor one. He has seen 
a rich nobility in Poland overbalance both a king and a 
people. He has seen a rich nobility, clergy and king in the 
late monarchy of France, overbalancing the people. He has 
seen rich barons dethroning poor kings, and poor ones the 
creatures of rich kings. It is in vain to say that these poor 
nobles have a share in the legislature, if they have neither 
property nor influence, to restrain or balance the wealth 
and influence of the king, with his army, and his patronage. 
A constitution, which divides rights among orders, giving to 
one a share, but no power to defend it ; and to another a 
share, with power to encroach, to menace and to corrupt, 
will be as defective, as one which should bestow all power 
upon an individual, or a single assembly, with an injunction 
not to abuse it. 

These arguments tend to show, that a balance of orders 
cannot exist without a balance of property among these 
orders, as Lord Shaftsbury and Mr. Adams unite in assert- 
ing. Concurring with these authors, two inferences of im- 
portance present themselves. 

One, that as a balance or equality of landed property 
cannot subsist in community with the present state of 
knowledge, commerce and alienation ; and as a balance or 
equality of power, cannot subsist without a balance of pro- 
perty, so the system of equalising power and property 
between a confederation of orders, if established, could only 
sustain its perfection during the moment of transit over the 
true balance, which might occur in the flight of property 
on the wings of commerce, alienation and knowledge, from 
the minor to the numerous order. The same effects could 
not possibly result from the gas of a balance of property, as 
from a real balance itself. 



AND 0£ -THE ENGLISH POLICY. 127 

The other is still more important. As no balance of 
specifiek property among confederated orders, can exist in 
communion with the present state of knowledge, commerce 
and alienation, taxation becomes the only engine for distri- 
buting and balancing property ; and must arrange society 
into the two orders of payers and receivers, The latter be- 
ing the enriched, must govern the impoverished order ; and 
being a minority, is by nature an aristocracy. Though a 
king, a titled and a plebeian order may continue to exist, 
the three nominal orders, are absorbed by the two real, 
and the evils follow, allowed by Mr. Adams to be invaria- 
ble consequences of two orders. 

The history of England demonstrates these remarks. 
The nobility were oppressive, whilst they held an over pro- 
portion of property, by laws for perpetuating inheritances ; 
and the monied aristocracy has become more oppressive by 
laws for transferring to it an over proportion of property, 
not through manors, but through taxation. The poison of 
perpetuities is lodged in the property secured to a separate 
interest, not in the mode of securing it ; nor can it be ren- 
dered innoxious, by the title of noble, clerical or stock. 
Had the feudal barons exchanged their perpetual inheritan- 
ces, for the perpetual income of stock and patronage, their 
power would never have been broken, whilst this new spe- 
cies of perpetuity lasted. 

This view of the subject accounts for the former and 
present eonduct of the English nobility. Whilst their pro- 
perty gave them power, they despised the system of taxa- 
tion and patronage, civil commotion was the fruit of their 
arrogance and ambition, and feudal tenures and services 
fed their avarice. But when their property was diminish- 
ed, and the king became the annual dispenser of a treasury 
perpetually replenished by loaning and taxation, then this 
nobility were converted into the courtiers of the crown, and 
the satellites of its usurpations. They fell under an influ- 
ence, equivalent to an annual distribution by the king, of 
ntiQwat baronies, among the partisans of monarchy. Yet 



123 PEINCIPLES OF THE POJ.ICY OF THE XJ, STATES, 

the United States have pointed their constitutional artillery 
against the aristocracies of superstition and the feudal sys- 
tem, after reason had destroyed the first, and knowledge, 
commerce and alienation, the second. Did they fear or 
love the living foe, the aristocracy of paper and patronage 
bottomed upon perpetual taxation ? or were they deceived 
at the formation of their constitutions, because it joined in 
trampling upon the dead bodies of its predecessors ? They 
will no longer hesitate in discerning, that the project of 
equalising property among titled orders, is as impracticable 
in communion with knowledge, commerce and alienation, 
or with the system of paper and patronage, as is the project 
of equalising it among individuals, in communion wifh hu- 
man mortality ; that both must remain speculative theories, 
rebutted by experience, until perpetuities are re-establish- 
ed, or immortality without fecundity is bestowed on man- 
kind : and that, excluding the idea of either, the election of 
the United States is confined to a distribution of property 
by industry and talents, or according to the avarice of a se- 
parate and minor portion of the society, by perpetual taxa- 
tion, paper currencies and the arts of patronage. The feu- 
dal perpetuities cost the nation nothing; stock perpetniiies 
are erected wholly at their expense. Is it better to entail 
stock on the nation to make an aristocracy, or to allow fa- 
thers to entail their lands on their sons for the same pur- 
pose ? 

Mr. Adams frequently endeavours to apply historical 

facts to his theory or the English system ; these applica- 
tions could not be past over, nor could the justifications of 
the American policy which his own facts furnished, be omit- 
ted. Our business proceeds either by shewing the insuffi- 
ciency of the evidence, in favour of balancing property and 
power among confederated orders ; the impossibility of in- 
troducing and supporting such a balance now, if it ever did 
exist ; or the preference of our policy to that. We are not 
deviating therefore from the subject, in deviating somewhat 
IVftni our quotation?. To these let us return. 



AND OF THE ENGLISH POLICY. 129 

The evidence of Machiavel, * that the nobles were the 
cause of the publick calamities which afflicted Italy'* is ad- 
mitted by Mr. Adams to be true. It is then admitted, that 
nobility distracted Italy for three centuries ; that it caused 
innumerable publick calamities; and that ultimately it 
usurped tyrannical power, almost over every Italian repub- 
lick. This is the evidence. It was said that the evi- 
dence adduced in favour of nobility by Mr. Adams, was 
against it. 

But this is only the evidence acknowledged by Mr. 
Adams to be true. He omitted to acknowledge, that under 
the operation of the system of king, lords and commons in 
England, nobility were turbulent and tyrannical, as long as 
their property was nailed to them by entails, and that they 
gradually sunk into parasites of royalty, after the nail was 
drawn. Nobility, whenever it has appeared, has proved it- 
self to be an evil moral principle by its effects. Experience 
is in full opposition to Mr. Adams's theory. And the ques- 
tion is, whether the United States will overlook experi- 
ence, to make one more attempt to convert nobility into a 
good moral principle, for the sake of satisfying Mr. Adams's 
ardour. 

Mr. Adams's collection of Italian calamities, comes 
down but a few years lower than 1495. We have ascribed 
them partly to ignorance, believing that ignorance is an evil 
principle, which enables nobility to afflict human nature 
with additional misery. But Mr. Adams, without consi- 
dering the different degrees of knowledge and ignorance, ex- 
isting six centuries past and at this time, uniformly consi- 
ders his theory as a complete panacea for every political 
body, whatever may be its malady. 

And yet he says that " in 1495 a man appeared in Flo- 
"rence, who declared that God had constituted him his 
" ambassador to Florence, with full power and express or- 
Si ders to declare his will; and this egregious impostor re- 
" gulated the government."* 

* Adams's Def. V. 2. 144. 

18 



130 PRINCIPLES OF THE POXICY OF THE IT. STATES, 

Mr. Adams believes that Lis theory was calculated t© 
regulate the government of a society, in a state of manners 
and ignorance, adapted for the practices of an egregious 
impostor. Supposing him right in this opinion, some rea- 
son ought to have been given, why a system, suitable to a 
national inclination for imposition and fraud, would also be 
suitable for an enlightened people. Until this is done, it is 
evident, that if the experiments of the Italian republicks, 
prove, as Mr. Adams asserts, that his theory would have 
been suitable to a state of ignorance and manners, similar 
to the Florentine ; it is by no means a consequence, that it 
is suitable also for a state of knowledge and manners simi- 
lar to the American. Degrees of infatuation may exist, for 
whieh imposition is the only remedy ; and it does not follow, 
that by proving a thing to be a remedy for infatuation, that 
it would be useful where there is no infatuation. Without 
illustrating the ignorance and infatuation of Italy by a his- 
tory of the crusades, we will pass on to the following quo- 
tation. 

" The quarrel between Frederick the emperour, and 
" Gregory the Pope, revived in Bologna the party distinc- 
" tions of Guelphs and Ghibellines, drawn from Germany 
M in the time of Henry the fourth. Not only some cities 
« favoured the emperour, and others the pontiff, but in the 
" city of Bologna, the citizens arrived to that degree of ex- 
" treme madness, that, in hatred of each other, they strove 
« to deprive each other of their lives and fortunes together. 
" Sons became enemies to their fathers, and brothers to 
" brothers ; and, as if it was not enough to shed their own 
« blood, like mad dogs, they proceeded to demolish houses, 
" and to burning the cities, the trees and the corn. This 
(i diabolical pestilence produced such an aversion to each 
« other, that they studied to distinguish themselves in all 
« things : in their clothes, in the colours they wore, in their 
« actions, their speech, their walk, their food, their salu- 
« tations, their drink, their manner of cutting bread, in 
" folding their napkins, in the cut of their hair, and innu- 



AND OF THE ENGLISH POLICY. 



131 



« merable other extravagances equally whimsical. A 
" plague truly horrible, a flame wholly inextinguishable,, 
« which proved the extinction of so many noble families, 
« and the ruin of so many miserable cities."* 

This picture of the effects of orders, is urged by Mr. 
Adams in favour of orders. He ascribes the calamities of 
Italy to the popular forms of their governments, and tells 
us at the same time, that they were owing to an Emperour, 
a Pope, and a nobility. Here then are all his orders, and 
one more than he contends for ; but one which will always 
be resorted to as an engine, in a rivalship between two 
others. A hierarchy is an engine which hereditary orders 
play upon each other, or upon the people. We find that 
the experiments of Italy were made with the one, the few, 
the many, and an established church. It was said, that 
they bore a strong resemblance to Mr. Adams's theory? and 
the English system. 

Let us suppose that Mr. Adams had written against 
orders, and in favour of the policy of the United States. 
Would he have considered the calamities in which the Ita- 
lian republicks were involved by an Emperour, a Pope and 
a nobility, as justifying or condemning our policy in exclud- 
ing a king, a metropolitan, and hereditary orders ? Would 
the effects stated in the extract, of a jealousy among such 
orders, have been urged by him to prove, that they were a 
curse, or a blessing ? Would he have advised the United 
States, after recapitulating the human miseries begotten by 
a jealousy of orders, in every instance of their existence, to 
surrender their peace and happiness, merely to try whether 
this evil principle, from which horrours innumerable have 
proceeded, might be made to produce good ? No, he would 
have demonstrated, that no politician, no theorist, no moral 
alchymist, has skill able to change the nature of good and 
evil, and to reverse the moral laws of the Deity. And he 
would have warned us pathetically against suffering our go- 
vernments to be modelled upon such a calculation, even 

* Adams's Def. v. 2, 405. 406. 



132 PRINCIPLES OP THE POLICY OP THE U. STATES, 

though the projector should declare himself to be an am- 
bassaador from God. 

Nothing can more evidently display an imagination 
heated beyond the temperature of impartial reason, than a 
resort to contradiction in supporting a project. 

Mr. Adams tells us that " there were in Italy, in the 
middle age, one hundred or two of cities, all independent 
republicks, and all constituted in the same manner. The 
history of one is, under different names and various circum- 
stances, the history of all." He addresses two volumes of 
examples, drawn from republicks consisting of single cities, 
as evidence to extensive countries ; and, rejecting even the 
idea, that extensive territory, national strength, and national 
safety, would alone have obviated many misfortunes to which 
these little republicks were liable, he positively assures us, 
that human nature is always the same, and that therefore 
governments consisting of single cities, furnish correct pre- 
cedents for the direction of numerous nations and extensive 
countries. Only premising, that the same argument would 
prove the propriety of teaching a great and free people how 
to govern themselves, by examples drawn from armies, 
crowded in dangerous garrisons, under their general, officer? 
and chaplains, we will proceed directly to the alleged incon- 
sistency. 

Nedham, in his "right constitution of a common 
wealth," had drawn arguments from the democratical can 
tons of Switzerland, which Mr. Adams thus disposes of. 

" There is not even a colour in his favour in the demo 
*< eratical cantons of Switzerland — narrow spots or barren 
« mountains, where the people live on milk ; nor in St. Ma- 
« rino or Ragusa : no precedents, surely, for England or 
" American States, where the people are numerous and 
ii rich, the territory capacious, and commerce extensive.'** 

All Mr. Adams's evidence, in his two last volumes, is 
drawn (Nieuchattel excepted, a narrow principality in Swit- 
zerland itself,) out of little republicks, composed of single 

* Adams's Def v. 3, 255, 



AND OF THE ENGLISH POXICY, 155 

cities, less than many cantons of Switzerland, in times of 
ignorance aad superstition, and when the state of poverty 
was such, that it was a great distinction to own a horse* 
" No precedents, surely, for England or American States, 
" where the people are numerous and rich, the territory 
* capacious, and the commerce extensive." And thus lie 
very correctly overturns, and disallows the whole evidence 
upon which his two last volumes are built. 

He does more ; he acknowledges an erroneous mode of 
reasoning in defence of his theory, in having wholly emitted 
to estimate the influence of physical or moral circumstances 
upon political experiments, and in hastily concluding human 
nature under all to be the same j by admitting the decisive 
force of such circumstances. 

In the quotation, extent of territory, population, wealth 
and commerce, are expressly stated as affecting forms of 
government, and such an influence is even insinuated as 
likely to ensue from a milk diet. Still stronger differences 
ought to have occurred to Mr. Adams, between his Italian 
cities and American states. Their relative situation as to 
knowledge and ignorance, superstition and religion, privi- 
leged orders and equality, are differences, infinitely stronger 
than those, admitted of themselves sufSciently strong to de- 
stroy evidence similar to his own. 

To contend both for the propriety and absurdity of the 
same evidence, by arguments urged for one object, and re- 
futed for another, discloses an impetuosity in speculation, 
which ought at least to awaken an apprehension, that he- 
reditary orders are more likely to repeat the crimes which 
Mr. Adams allows them to have committed, than to be con- 
verted into blessings by a balance of property and power. 

Had not Mr. Adams's evidence been inapplicable both to 
the moral and physical situation of the United States, it is 
brought forward in a mode better calculated to excite pas- 
sion and prejudice, than reason and reflection. A mass of 
errour, rage and ambition ; of tragical catastrophe, solicit- 
ing sympathy by naming the persons of the drama ; and of 



134 PRINCIPLES OF THE POLICY OF THE U. STATES, 

demolished castles, mangled limbs, and putrid carcasses, is 
exhibited. But truth can only be discovered by considering 
the evidence on both sides. Another mass of these disgust- 
ing materials, labelled " Behold the effects of monarchy and 
aristocracy," might have saved the United States the humi- 
liation of having their credulity experimentally removed. 
Or was it necessary to excite an abhorrence of republican 
governments, to prepare the mind for a patient contempla- 
tion even of the modest monarchy, called limited. 

A search among the relicks of antiquity, for principles 
©f which to form a modern government, requires a contem- 
poraneous estimate. The superiority of the republican po- 
licy of the United States over the ancient monarchies of 
Persia and Macedonia, is an argument precisely as strong in 
favour of popular governments, as would have been the su- 
periority of the present monarchy of Britain, over the re- 
publicks of Athens, Rome, Carthage and of Italy, in favour 
of monarchy, supposing Mr. Adams to have established it. 
In both cases the argument would be inconclusive. But al- 
though results of inconclusive authority only can arise from 
a comparison between ancient and modern governments ; 
yet a comparison of ancient governments with each other, 
will furnish strong indications of preference and superiority 
between political principles. 

These indications uniformly appear on the side of the 
popular principle ; and the nearer the forms of government 
approached to the policy of the United States, the stronger 
are the indications of superiority. As rivals of Rome and 
Carthage, the contemporary monarchies are almost imper- 
ceptible ; and above an hundred generations, almost forget- 
ting what the rest of the world did at that time, have trans- 
mitted to us an admiration of the little Athenian democracy, 
which we shall hand down to a fathomless posterity. 

But let us come to the world we live in ; to a world, 
not guided by superstition but by religion. Instead of diving 
after wisdom into the gloom of antiquity, when men made 
gods, let us leave Mr. Adams in possession of his opinion, 



ASn-OV THE ENGLISH POLICY* 135 

that under truth or superstition, under the Deity or Jupi- 
ter, the human character is the same. And leaving divines 
.also to felicitate themselves on the inutility of their labours, 
which this doctrine admits, let us bring into comparison the 
existing competitors for pre-eminence. These are the first 
among republicks, and the first among monarchies. 

If the comparison commences from the first settlement 
of the United States, several centuries of prosperity and 
good order present themselves under the colonial form of 
government. How can this prosperity and good order be 
accounted for? By the absence of jealous and rival orders ; 
by the absence of the system of balancing power and pro- 
perty between such orders ; by the absence of the system of 
paper and patronage, for perpetuating property to one inte- 
rest at the expense of another ; and by the absence of a no- 
minal king. The errours in the form of the colonial go- 
vernment slept, because these evils were not present to awa- 
ken them ; and the solitary good principle it possessed, ope- 
rated under a sufferance, arising from the inattention of the 
evil principles united with it. Election sufficed to produce 
colonial prosperity and good order, and silently formed the 
national character and love of liberty, which sustained a fu- 
rious war almost devoid of any other resource. 

At length monarchy, aristocracy, and taxation, awaken- 
ed. Mr. Adams's hereditary representation and our elec- 
tive representation, appeared to be principles exactly oppo- 
site, in producing opposite effects. His hereditary orders, 
and the system of paper and patronage, took one side, and 
the elective principle the other. Hereditary orders and the 
people, here, as in Rome and Italy, quarrelled. Had a por- 
tion of these orders, and the projects of banking and fund- 
ing, been mingled with the elective system at the com- 
mencement of these hostilities, they would have destroyed 
its efficacy, in like manner as nobility has uniformly de- 
stroyed the efficacy of the elective principle, wherever it 
has been mingled with it ,• and as a paper influence has de- 
stroyed its eifieacy in England. And as election has never 



JLS6 PRINCIPLES OF THE POLICY OT THE U. STATES, 

produced equal beneficial effect.?, in communion with nobility 
or with paper and patronage, as when disunited from them 
in the instance of the United States, it probably never will. 

In addition to the colonial prosperity, under the sub- 
stantial auspices of the elective principle, that which we 
have experienced subsequently to the revolution is no theo- 
ry, no hypothesis ; it is plain matter of fact, of above thirty 
years standing. In every modification of their govern- 
ments, the United States have adhered to it. When have 
we seen the people perpetrating the atrocious crimes char- 
ged to popular governments, plundering property, banishing 
merit, or tearing asunder the limbs of innocence ? Where 
are wars, tumults, oppression, prosecutions and corruption, 
proceeding from the people ? If these calamities have not 
appeared under our policy, we ought to conclude that they 
proceeded in former times from the causes which we have 
excluded ; or that the human character has undergone a mo- 
ral change, which secures a nation, if it will govern itself, 
against any danger from itself. 

From the facts established by the experience of the Uni- 
ted States, turn to the contemplation of those established 
by the experience of the English system of hereditary or- 
ders, paper and patronage, during the same period. Esti- 
mate the wars, entered into for the purpose of instructing 
Europe in political metaphy sicks, or for the sake of these 
orders. Estimate the taxes, the tythes, the poor houses, 
the prisons, the fleets, the armies, the banishments to colo- 
nise a wilderness under martial law, the bastiles of state 
criminals, the well tenanted gibbets, the national debt, am} 
the patronage and corruption which guides and poisons eve- 
ry publick measure. 

If it be urged, that commotions have appeared under 
our system; without stopping to inquire, whether they 
ought to be ascribed to that, or to the arts of its rival sys- 
tem, it suffices to exhibit as a counterpoise to our bloodless 
wars, and comical excursions, the commotions in Ireland, 
marked br devastation and slaughter. 



AND OF THE ENGLISH POLICY. 137 

It cannot be omitted, that Connecticut underwent no 
change of government by the revolution. Here, more power 
has been condensed for centuries in representatives frequent- 
ly elected, than is enjoyed by representatives in any other 
state of the Union. The happiness and good order of Con- 
necticut, during the long operation of her popular form of 
government, infinitely exceeds the happiness and good or- 
der of England during the same, or any other period. Pri- 
vileged orders had no influence in Connecticut, and whate- 
ver happiness and prosperity she enjoyed, was owing to the 
elective principle. The continued efficacy of election for 
two centuries in this instance, unconnected with privileged 
orders, accounts for its inefficacy in their presence. This 
remark is farther warranted, by the contemporary appear- 
ance of party malevolence and a paper system in the United 
States. So soon as an imitation of the English policy for 
dividing the nation into the two orders of payers and receiv- 
ers, began to operate, the rivalry of orders, and the avarice 
of interest, began to make their accustomed efforts, to des- 
troy the good effects of election. 

Of the disgust against it, which they excite themselves, 
these vicious principles will be the first to take advantage. 
Mr. Adams has already seriously informed us, tliat heredi- 
tary kings and nobles are as much the representatives of 
the nation, as those they elect ; and the following quotation 
will enforce the argument, accounting for the inefficacy of 
election in communion with privileged or seperate interests ; 
because it displays the intemperate enmity entertained by 
their disciples to the elective principle. 

« If the elections are in a large country like England, 
«* for example, or one of the United States of America, 
" where various cities, towns, boroughs, and corporations 
" are to be represented, each scene of election will have two 
" or more candidates, and two or more parties, each of 
" which will study its sleights and projects, disguise its de- 
« signs, draw in tools, and worm out enemies. We must 
« remember, that every party, and every individual, is now 

19 



iSB PRINCIPLES OF THE POLICY OP THE V. STATES, 

" struggling for a share in the executive and judicial power 
(€ as well as legislative? for a share in the distribution of all 
* honours, offices, rewards and profits. Every passion and 
** prejudice of every voter will be applied to ; every flattery 
" and menace, every trick and bribe that can he bestowed, 
" and will be accepted, will be used ; and what is horrible 
" to think of. that candidate or that agent who has fewest 
" scruples; who will propagate lies and slanders with most 
" confidence and secrecy : who will wheedle, flatter and ca- 
« jole ; who will debauch the people by treats, feasts and di~ 
Si versions with the least hesitation, and bribe with the most 
(( impudent front, which can consist with hypocritical con- 
" cealment, will draw in tools and worm out enemies the 
i( fastest ; unsullied honour, sterling integrity, real virtue, 
" will stand a very unequal chance. When vice, folly, im- 
« pudence and knavery, have carried the election one year, 
« they tvill acquire, in the course of it, fresh influence and 
" power to succeed the next. In the course of the year, the 
u delegate in an assembly that disposes of all commissions, 
u contracts and pensions, has many opportunities to reward 
« his friends among his constituents, and punish his ene- 
" mies. The son or other relation of one friend has a com- 
« mission given him in the army, another in the navy, a 
" third a benefice in the church, a fourth in the customs, a 
« fifth in the excise ; shares in loans and contracts are dis- 
" tributed among his friends, by which they are enabled to 
" increase their own and his dependents and partisans, or. 
" in other words, to draw in more instruments and parties. 
" and worm out their opposites. All this is so easy to eom- 
(i prehend, so obvious to sight, and so certainly known in 
f( universal experience, that it is astonishing that our au- 
<' thor should have ventured to assert, that such a govern* 
" ment kills the canker-worm faction."* 

The reader will be pleased to remark, that Mr. Adams 
has had his eye fixed upon the operation of election in Eng- 
land, whilst he is giving its character. The enumerated 
* Adams's Def. v. 3, 275. 



AXD OF THE ENGLISH POLICY. 139 

modes of corruption, were most of them exclusively prac- 
tised in England when he wrote this extract ; and the means 
of practising the greater part, did not even exist in the 
United States. Presently, we shall exhibit extracts, where- 
in Mr. Adams recommends hereditary orders as the refuge 
from the vices of election* He is obliged to bend his eye 
towards England, to get the contour of a detestable picture 
of election, and places it before our eyes, to induce us to in- 
troduce the policy of England. He will not see, that our 
elective system is more perfect than the English, because 
it is less corrupted by the very policy, which has furnished! 
the ideas for his invective : but the United States will ne- 
ver be charmed to fly down the gaping throat of a dreadful 
monster, in order to escape its malignancy. They will be- 
hold this character of election when united with hereditary 
orders, or seperate interests, as a confession of the enmity 
and inconsistency of the two principles, and of the certain 
corruption of the first, by an alliance with the second. 

It will not be denied, that the elective system of the Unit- 
ed States, is chargeable with several of the vices imputed 
to election by Mr. Adams ; but it does not follow, that we 
ought to surrender it for a system exposed to them all. The 
use, which republicanism ought to make of the charge, is, 
to awaken her sons to the necessity of removing these vices. 
Their danger is imminent, when they are already made the 
ground of a treatise in recommendation of hereditary or- 
ders, as preferable to the vices of election. Nor does the 
difficulty of rendering the elective system more perfect in 
America, seem to be insurmountable, when it is recollect- 
ed, that the whole catalogue of vices ascribed to it by Mr. 
Adams, arises from a capacity in the delegate to acquire or 
dispose of money and offices. The effects of this capacity 
prove it to be an evil political principle, exciting the evil 
moral qualities of human nature. It is capable of removal 
fiom legislative delegates, and if it produces the effects as- 
cribed to it by Mr. Adams, it ought to be removed, 
this subject belongs to the defects of the constitution bl 
United States. 



1£0 PRINCIPLES OF THE POLICY OF THE U. STATES, 

Let us, therefore, return to a contemplation of Mr. 
Adams's invective against election. It is a mode of attack, 
precisely similar to that used against popular governments. 
To discredit the one, a vast collection of evils is made, aris- 
ing under a vast variety of governments, whether produced 
by the form of the government, or by other causes. To dis- 
credit the other, a picture is drawn of all the vices of elec- 
tion, acting with orders. " It is horrible to think of," says 
Mr. Adams. His horrour might have been considerably aug- 
mented, by collecting into a mass all the vices of human na- 
ture, which would have completely rounded up the doctrine 
" that republicanism was a hell, election its turbulence, and 
men its devils." 

Human reason must turn on preference, not on perfec- 
tion. If election is exploded, shall we be requited for its loss 
by the virtual representation of kings and nobles ; or by 
surrendering our government to paper ami patronage : 
These are the objects, with which we must compare election, 
before we are seduced to give it up for a system more defec 
tive, because Mr. Adams contends, that, like every thing 
human, it is imperfect. Admitting it to be so, it is unne 
eessary in imitation of Mr. Adams's mode of reasoning, to 
enrage our readers with a collection of the follies, oppres- 
sions and cruelties, committed by the fools, tyrants and mad 
men, to which hereditary representation has exposed the 
world ,* to prove that hereditary representation is more de- 
fective than actual election. 

America has experienced both. Hereditary representa- 
tion assailed her liberty and happiness ; elected representa- 
tion defended them. She has seen hereditary represestati 
on destroying the existence of the Irish nation ; whilst elect- 
ed representation, though unequal and corrupted, made 
some stand for it. There, hereditary representation dis- 
closed that kind of responsibility, which Congress would 
disclose by a law for uniting these States with England ; and 
had hereditary representation existed at the peace, a king 
like that enjoyed by Ireland, of the Neuchattel species* 
would probably have been one of its fruits* 



AXB OF THE ENGLISH POXXCY, 141 

Our quotation must be recollected to understand the re- 
marks it suggests. It may be thus condensed. « In such 
«• countries as England and America, election will produce 
a every species of villainy; the greatest rascals will sue- 
" ceeu ; and being once elected, will retain their power." 

Mr. Adams does not perceive, that his eagerness for he- 
reditary orders, has here again entangled him in an incon- 
sistency. For their sake he labours to inculcate an abhorrence 
of election, without recollecting, that he relies upon it for 
one branch of his own theory. Will he say, that election? 
united with hereditary orders, will be purged of its bad 
qualities ? That it is abominable, applied to a senate, gover- 
nour or president ; but admirable, applied to a house of com- 
mons ? And will he, by escaping from the inconsistency 
through these assertions, pass final sentence upon our policy 
in the opprobrious epithets of the extract ? 

But Mr. Adams cannot be permitted to avail himself of 
these assertions ; and therefore his disapprobation of elec- 
tion, must stand, unqualified and unequivocal. It cannot 
be conceded as true, that election in England exhibits few- 
er vices, than in the United States ; or that the elected or- 
der of that country, are less corrupt than the elected func- 
tionaries of this. If, therefore, he explodes the whole of our 
policy by discrediting election, he also explodes so much of 
his as depends upon the same principle, and leaves to his own 
theory, nothing that he commends, hereditary representa- 
tion excepted. 

It is not by inconsistent railings and unbounded applaus- 
es, that we are edified. It is not by magnifying the defects 
of election, and concealing its benefits, that we can estimate 
its value. Had a fair comparison been drawn between the 
state of election, in the United States and in England, a 
vast superiority in point of purity, would have appeared on 
the side of the United States. If so, frequency and purity 
of election, are in concord ; and nobility and purity of elec- 
tion, in discord. 



142 PRINCIPLES OF THE POLICY OP THE U. STATES, 

The idea and origin of election, have been generally, if* 
not universally, defective, until the American revolution. In 
England, it is to this day a remnant of feudality, planted by 
prerogative. It is derived, not from the inherent natural 
right of self government, but from the gratuitous donation 
of a feudal monarch. 

Ambition and avarice have been perpetually forming com- 
binations, and practising devices for depriving men of their 
rights. Hence ensue struggles for redress ; in the pro- 
gress of which, if the usurpers find it prudent to relax, they 
artfully deal out these relaxations, not as rights indepen- 
dent of their pleasure, but as meritorious acts of grace and 
favour. 

Accordingly, election or self government being a right 
fatal to usurpation, whenever some portion of it could no 
longer be withheld from the people, usurpers have laboured 
to defeat it, first, by restricting it to the idea of an indul- 
gence ; and, secondly, by contaminating it with destructive 
modifications. 

The struggles between the people and nobles of Rome ; 
the indulgence and modification of suffrage ; the mode of 
voting, so as to bestow the decision on wealth or poverty • 
the inveterate parties created by this division ; and the vast 
indefinite powers retained by the senate ; were artifices of 
hereditary orders to contaminate election and defeat its 
effects. 

By stratagem, also, has election been managed in Eng- 
land. It was an indulgence of the kings. It was bestowed 
without rule, according to the suggestions of royal interest 
or ambition. And it is retained in its present corrupt state, 
to destroy its efficacy. It discloses no principle of right or 
justice, in origin, modification or practice. 

Why then has Mr. Adams estimated the elective princi- 
ple by the examples of Rome and England, where it was 
bottomed upon notorious fraud ? In America, the principle 
is better understood ; it feels the dignity of a right ; we 
have no hereditary orders (its natural enemy) to poison it > 



AND 0? THE ENGLISH POLICY* l&S 

and it enjoys the power of exercising its will. The differ- 
ence in parentage between truth and errour ; and in nur- 
ture, between fraud and honesty, are both so essential, as to 
justify expectations from the elective principle, which that 
principle, modelled by patrician craft, monarchical despo- 
tism, or paper frauds, does not inspire. 

Much contention and ingenuity has arisen out of the questi- 
on, whether society is natural or factitious. If society is 
natural, then natural rights may exist in, and be improved 
and secured by a state of society. Payne contends for the 
natural rights of man ; Adams for the natural rights of 
aristocracy. If society is factitious, those who make it, 
can regulate rights. Society must be composed of, or cre- t 
ated by individuals, without whom, it can neither exist nor 
act. Society exclusively of individuals, is an ideal being, as 
metaphysical as the idea of a triangle. If a number of peo- 
ple should inclose themselves within a triangle, they would 
hear with great astonishment, that they had lost the power 
of changing the form of the inclosure ; and that the dead 
figure of the triangle governed living beings, instead of liv- 
ing beings who created that figure, governing it. So by 
the magick of avarice and ambition, the word society is se- 
vered from a nation, and converted into a metaphysical 
spectre, auspicious only to the tyrants of society. But the 
United States have detected the crafty absurdity ; and Mr. 
Adams has expressly conceded to nations, a natural right to 
modify their governments. It is true he attempts to satis- 
fy this right by the idea of hereditary representatives ; al- 
lowing the existence of the right of self government, but at* 
tempting to evade its effect. 

Thus the doctrine of distinguishing society from the in- 
dividuals composing it, is ingeniously concealed under the 
notion of hereditary representation, so as to render the con- 
cession, that all societies have a right to modify their go- 
vernments, nominal and ineffectual. As we have seen the 
principle of election artfully destroyed, by the hereditary 
orders of Rome and England ; so here, the principle of so- 



i** PRINCIPLE'S OF THE POLICY QP THE 17. "STATES, 

oiety, namely, the right of self government, whilst it is allow- 
ed, is also annihilated by the idea of a representation of society 
by these same hereditary orders. For no sooner are these 
orders created, than they become the snagiek representatives 
of the people, according to Mr. Adams, and use the term 
society as an incantation, with which to transfer the rights 
of associated man, to associated orders. Upon the doc- 
trines, that man has no natural rights, but that aristocrati- 
cal orders, as the progeny of nature, have, is suspended the 
controversy between the political systems which divide 
mankind. 

Mr. Adams, by allowing that all societies have a natural 
right to modify their governments, admits that some can- 
not possess more of this right than others : and that one ge- 
neration cannot possess a natural right to violate the same 
natural right of another, by substituting rights of orders for 
the rights of society. Whenever this violation is submitted 
to, the natural right of a society to modify its government, 
acknowledged by Mr. Adams, merges in a factitious right 
of orders to do so ; and thus this right is defeated, just as 
election was defeated at Rome and in England. 

For Mr. Adams's concession of the right of self govern- 
ment to all societies, attended by his system of orders, is 
only the admission of a right so momentary and evanescent, 
as to be lost in the instant of its exercise, and as to subject 
all generations to the will of one. 

Between election, and the conceded right of self govern- 
ment, the connection must be indissoluble, or the concession 
will be nugatory and deceptions ; and, therefore, it is by no 
means wonderful, that artificial orders, which constitute 
the most successful mode of destroying the right of self go- 
vernment, should employ every artifice to frustrate the only 
means of maintaining it ; or that Mr. Adams, the champion 
of these orders, should treat election with a severity, on- 
ly equalled by the severity with which he has treated repub- 
lican governments ; extracting his character of both from 
corruptions caused by his own orders, Election does not 



AA» »F THE ENGLISH FOLIC X. 1*5 

yet engage two orders of rich and poor in perpetual hostili- 
ties in tlie United States \ but all ranks vote individually, 
interwoven and commixed ; nor is it yet corrupted by com- 
missions in armies, navies or churches, by loans or contracts, 
or by unequal representation and purchase. These are the 
corruptions, invented by political orders to destroy the effi- 
cacy of election, and these orders are the remedies proposed 
by Mr. Adams, for the evils of their own invention. 

As in England, the national right of self government, is 
ever seized by orders 5 accordingly Judge Blaekstone declares 
that " the parliament may change the nature of the go- 
vernment, without consulting the people;" because the or- 
ders composing it, consider themselves as composing the so- 
ciety, and the people as no longer entitled to the right of 
modifying their government, allowed by Mr. Adams to eve- 
ry society. Of this allowance, the futility in communion 
with orders, is thus demonstrated by the practice and prin- 
ciples of Mr. Adams's theory, in the instance of England. 

By deducing election from the grace and favour of he- 
reditary chiefs, and by the artifice of compounding? society 
of orders, and not of individuals, the usurpation of a right to 
modify the government without consulting a nation, is also 
produced ; it is this usurpation, which enslaves societies, 
under the sanction of society ; thus the orders of Denmark 
abolished election, and made the monarch despotick ; pre 
tending to constitute the society, they usurped the power of 
modifying the government, and enslaved the society. So 
acted the orders of Ireland. So acted the orders oi Eng- 
land, in changing the succession of the crown ; and It ap- 
pointing representatives for the people for four years, by a 
law extending the time of service from three to seven. 

It was one effort of the first part of this essay, to prove 
that aristocracy in every form, was artificial ; but if a rea- 
der can be found who dissents from that, opinion, none will 
deny that hereditary orders are so. They are an effect of 
society, as much as hereditary estates in land. Both arise 
from laws. Society is paramount to law ; law, then fore, 

*0 



146 PRINCIPLES OF THE POLICY OF THE U. STATES, 

cannot transfer social op national rights from its creator, 
society, to its creature, hereditary orders. An exclusive 
right to form or alter a government is annexed to society, 
in every moment of its existence ; and therefore a direct or 
indirect exercise of it by a government, a combination or an 
individual, is a badge of usurpation, and a harbinger of des- 
potism. 

This doctrine is admitted by the acknowledgment of Sir. 
Adams, that hereditary orders are the representatives of 
the nation ; an acknowledgment, however, artfully bottom- 
ed upon the theory, that all governments, are the represen- 
tatives of nations ; and defeated by betraying in practice na- 
tional rights to these theoretical representatives. 

It appears that hereditary orders have uniformly destroy- 
ed the doctrine of representation, by originating election 
from erroneous principles ; by corrupting it with treache- 
rous modifications ; and by fraudulently constituting them- 
selves into the society ; a power above responsibility. Of 
all the mischiefs produced by them, experience testifies to 
none with more constancy, than their successful operations 
to destroy the efficacy of election. Mr. Adams depends up- 
on this efficacy to control hereditary orders, whilst experi- 
ence tells him, that these orders have invariably destroyed 
the efficacy itself. Yet he builds his theory upon experi- 
ence. He himself testifies to the vices of election ; yet he 
relies upon its virtue to correct the vices of hereditary or- 
ders; he sees the vices of election produced by these orders 
themselves, and he proposes a remedy, in the continuance of 
the cause. Experience uniformly tells him, that heredita- 
ry orders, and a fair representation or a real responsibility, 
have never subsisted together ; aud he subjoins to his theo- 
ry the novel and mystical idea, that hereditary orders are 
representatives of the nation, which they have never ad- 
mitted themselves, to reinstate a representation instead of 
that arising from election, which they corrupt and destroy. 
The admonitions of experience cannot be mistaken by 
deliberation and prudence. They consist on the one hand, 



AND OF THE ENGLISH POLICY. 147 

in the uniform corruption or destruction of election and re- 
presentation by hereditary orders : on the other, in a long 
course of beneficial effects in the United States from elec- 
tion and representation, where there are no such orders. 
Mr. Adams has viewed the elective system through the first 
perspective, and shuts his eyes upon the second. From the 
first lie collects its character, and disgusted with vices, re- 
fleeted from the English system itself, he proposes by intro- 
ducing that system, to remedy the elective system of the 
United States. 

Nedham had said " that the people, by representatives 
" successively chosen, were the best guardians of their own 
" liberties."* And that « the life of liberty, and the only 
" remedy against self interest, lies in succession of powers 
" and persons."! * n answer to which, Mr. Adams observes, 
" If this is so, the United States of America have taken the 
" most effectual measures to secure that life and that remedy, 
** in establishing annual elections of their governours, sena- 
<•' tors and representatives. This will probably be allowed to be 
" as perfect an establishment of a succession of powers and 
"persons", as human laws can make: but in what manner 
*• annual elections of governours and senators will operate, 
" remains to be ascertained. It should always be reinem- 
*•' bered, that this is not the first experiment that was ever 
<• made in the world of elections to great offices of state : 
*• how they have operated in every great nation, and what 
" has been their end, is \ery well known. Mankind have 
" universally discovered that chance was preferable to a cor- 
" rupt choice, and have trusted Providence rather than 
" themselves. First magistrates and senators had better be 
•• made hereditary at once, than that the people should be 
H universally debauched and bribed, go to loggerheads, and 
" fiy to arms regularly every year. Thank heaven ! Ameri- 
" cans understand calling conventions ; and if the lime 
•* should come, as it is very possible it may, when hereditary 
« descent shall become a less evil than annual fraud and 

* Adams's Def. v. 3, 213. f Adams's Def. v. 3, 282. 



1 fc8 PRINCIPLES OP THE POLICY OF THE U. STATES, 

« violence, such a convention may still prevent the first ma- 
" gistrate from becoming absolute, as well as hereditary."* 
Nedham had also said « that it is but reason that the 
« people should see that none be interested in the supreme 
" authority, but persons of their own election, and such as 
" must in a short time, return again into the same condition 
4t with themselves." In answer to which, Mr. Adams ob- 
serves, that " the Americans have agreed with this writer 
«* in this sentiment. This hazardous experiment they have 
" tried, and if elections are soberly made, it may answer 
" very well ; but if parties, factions, drunkenness, bribes, 
« armies and delirium, eome in, as they always hare done 
*f sooner or later, to embroil and decide every thing, the 
" people must again have recourse to conventions, and find 
«< a remedy. Neither philosophy nor policy has yet discover- 
" ed any other cure, than by prolonging the duration of the 
"first magistrate and senators. The evil may be lessened 
" and postponed, by elections for longer periods of years, 
6i till they come for life ; and if this is not found an ade- 
" quate remedy, there will remain no other but to make 
« them hereditary. The delicacy or the dread of nnpopu- 
" larity, that should induce any man to conceal this import- 
a ant truth from the full view and contemplation of the 
« people, would be a weakness, if not a vice."f 

The reader now perceives the necessity of considering 
election, as operating independently, or under the influence 
of hereditary orders ; because if it is more vicious in the 
latter situation than in the former, Mr. Adams's proposal to 
amend a less vicious elective system, by substituting for it 
one more so, is undoubtedly precipitate and erroneous. 
Election has been universally in the supposed vicious state, 
previously to the experiment of the United States, and from 
this vicious state Mr. Adams has drawn his inferences. At 
this moment it exists in the United States unconnected, and 
in England, connected, with hereditary orders ; in the two 
situations between which a distinction has been attempted. 

* Adams's Def. v. 3 S 282 s 283. f Adams's Def. v. 3, 256. 



ANB OF THE EN«LIS» FQIICT. $\9 

The utmost pitch of hi3 remedy is to exchaisgje ©«r elective 
and representative vices, for those of England. Election in 
England, being derived from an erroneous source, and cor-* 
rupted by the artifices of hereditary power, is of course 
more vicious and less efficient than in America ; and being 
an object of contempt on account of its vices, it attracts hot 
a small share of national confidence, and forms but an in- 
considerable obstacle to the tyranny and oppression of mo- 
narchy and aristocracy ; in fact we shall hereafter eudea-? 
vour to prove, that it is modified into an instrument for their 
use. 

If it was true, therefore, as Mr. Adams asserts, " that 
" the manner in which annual elections of governours and 
«« senators will operate in the United States remained to be 
« ascertained," yet, as the utter corruption of election by 
hereditary power, does not remain to be ascertained, nei- 
ther philosophy nor poliey have yet discovered, that a cer- 
tain and malignant evil, was preferable to a possible good. 

Philosophy, unbiassed by affections superseding a love of 
wisdom, has seldom or never given her suffrage in favour of 
hereditary power, nor will she shut her eyes upon the elec- 
tive experiment of the United States, although Mr. Ada?ns 
in policy is pleased to assert, that it remains to be made. 
Jt has been made upon some hundreds of governours, and 
thousands of senators. Is nothing ascertained? Will an 
equal number of kings and lords act upon the political thea- 
tre, without ascertaining also the value of the hereditary 
principle ? 

The quotations place " corrupt choice" in contrast 
with " chance ;" and « debauchery, bribery and annual 
civil war," with " hereditary government." The treatise, as- 
cribes to aristocracy " virtue, wisdom and usefulness." and 
one of the extracts ascribes to election, the utmost degree 
of profligacy. Such a mode of reasoning is ficticious, be- 
cause it suppresses all the shade of the hereditary principle, 
and all the light of the elective ; and presenting a picture 
of each, which excludes the most striking features of both, 



150 PKLNCIPLES OF THE POLICY OF THE TT. STATES, 

by deforming one and embellishing the other, it excessively 
obstructs our efforts to draw a correct comparison between 
them. Yet these fictions really terrified Mr. Adams to such 
a degree, as to draw from him an ejaculation for the disco- 
very of conventions, which would enable the Americans to 
take refuge from the " annual fraud and violence" of elec- 
tion, under " hereditary descent; " and invigorated his mind 
against the " dread of unpopularity," to announce " the im- 
portant truth," that « hereditary first magistrates and sena- 
tors" were the final " remedy" against the vices of the 
elective system. 

Mr. Adams frequently strikes with such incautious fury 
at his adversary, as to wound himself. It was before re- 
marked, that the profligacy he ascribes to election, would 
corrupt his own theory, as well as ours, had it merited his 
censures ; and now it is very remarkable, that he fiies to a 
«f convention" as a remedy against ** election.'" Differing 
with all other politicians, he makes virtue the principle of 
hereditary power; vice, of elective power; and jet this 
vice is his resource, for the creation of this virtue. 

Again. Mr. Adams considers a concentration of power 
in a single body of representatives, as a political errour of 
unequalled magnitude ; yet he proposes to collect this very 
body, by tSie resource, so corrupt in his opinion, and confides 
in it to introduce his theory, which lie is fascinated to be- 
lieve; would be an act of the highest publiek benefit. A sin- 
gle body of representatives, says he, is a political monster, 
yet it has already done great good in America : " thank 
heaven, Americans understand calling conventions ;" and it 
may, therefore, do one good thing more, that is, destroy all 
the good things it has hitherto done, and establish " heredi- 
tary descent." Thus allowing to the elective principle the 
utmost perfection, after having sunk all its useful faculties 
in an invective. But both the oue and the other is done for 
the sake of an hypothesis. 

The case of conventions will furnish the strongest argu- 
ments in favour of election, and many hints in relation to 



AND OF THE ENGLISH POLICY. 151 

the organization of legislative bodies, of which it is proba- 
ble, a very beneficial use will at some future period be 
made. 

Conventions are creatures of election ; of election, made 
upon the widest scale ; they have been so successfully prac- 
tised in America, as to awaken Mr. Adams's piety ; they 
have probably prevented, and have never excited civil war ; 
they have justified none of the charges exhibited against 
election, and have begotten all the political happiness enjoy- 
ed in the United States, for nearly the last thirty years. 
This is an operation of election, through the organ of a 
single chamber. 

Why has this operation been so completely consistent, 
both in war and peace, in danger and safety, in producing 
order and happiness ? On the contrary, why has the same 
principle, election, as Mr. Adams proves by a multitude of 
examples, produced in most cases (excepting the United 
States) confusion, civil war, riot and crimes ? Mr. Adams 
in commemorating the discovery of conventions, ought to 
have remarked and explained the reason of these different 
effects from the same principle. 

The solution of the difficulty justifies one ground taken 
in defence of our elective system. Election, as heretofore 
practised, was of spurious birth, and corrupted by rivals. 
Here, privileged orders and hierarchies did not exist to cor- 
rupt it, and it drew its origin from a society composed of 
people, and not of orders. Heretofore election was the 
martyr of aits and obloquies invented and practised by its 
enemies ; and it only remains for us to determine, whether 
we will become the bubbles of examples, produced by frauds, 
of which the ancients were the victims. 

The wonderful virtue and chastity of election and repre* 
sentation in the case of conventions, may be owing in a de- 
gree, to something different in the constitution of that spe- 
cies of power, from the constitution of an ordinary legisla- 
ture. The chief differences usually existing are, that mem- 
bers of conventions are chosen by a greater number rfelee- 



152 PRINCIPLES OP THE P0&ICY OF THE V. STATES? 

tors, for a shorter space, and have no opportunities of ac- 
quiring or bestowing publick money or publick offices. To 
opposite causes, Mr. Adams ascribes the evils incident to a 
single chamber of representatives ; these evils do not ap- 
pear in conventions, because the causes are absent ; a fact 
presenting a new illustration of our political analysis. As 
in the case of our governours, power is bestowed, so as to 
awaken the good and suppress the evil qualities of human 
nature ; so the case of conventions proves the safety and 
utility of a single house of representatives, organized so as 
to suppress, and not to solicit, avarice and ambition. 

An elective system, therefore, will be either good or bad, 
as it is calculated to suppress or excite the good or evil 
qualities of mankind ; and its nature may be ascertained by 
applying to it the political analysis contended for in this es- 
say. Election hy irritated and inimical clans, arranged in- 
to factions, as at Rome ; which places a nation in the hands 
of a minority, or exposes it to sale, as in England ; or which 
exalts representation above responsibility, and enables it to 
invade or abridge the publick liberty, as in France ; is found- 
ed in an evil principle, and will excite evil qualities. The 
eases of Csesar, Cromwell, Bonaparte, and numberless 
others, are illustrations. Election, which enables a legisla- 
ture to convey office or wealth to themselves, directly or 
indirectly, will also convey evil qualities into the bosom of 
representation. And election, subjected to the avts of an 
interest distinct from and inimical to the nation, will gene- 
rate the evils of lying, cheating, bribery, and several others 
enumerated by Mr. Adams. But election founded in good 
moral principles, will produce good effects. The eases of 
conventions and governours are eminent proofs of the cor- 
rectness of this idea. Conventions have frequently disclos- 
ed virtuous sentiments, and seldom or never vicious. But 
they were not elected by inimical orders or interests, by mi- 
norities, or by bargain and sale ; the representative was not 
placed beyond responsibility, or enabled to usurp despotick 
authority; nor was his avarkc or ambition awakened, by 



AND OF THE ENGLISH POLICY* 153 

making his election and representation the channel, for 
bringing office or money to himself. This subject so radi- 
cally important to the United States, will demand a further 
consideration. 

Here, I shall only add, that the experiment proposed by 
Mr. Adams, is extremely hazardous ; it is not to correct, 
but to destroy two thirds of our elective system, and to cor- 
rupt the remaining third by hereditary orders. This is 
proposed to be effected by election itself, on its widest 
ground. If the elective and representative system, should 
be persuaded to destroy two thirds of itself, is it not ques- 
tionable, whether the substituted hereditary principle, will 
be equally ready to submit to annihilation, should the expe- 
riment be unfortunate ? Will a privileged order, once in- 
vested with power, follow the example of election and re- 
presentation, by becoming a felo de se ? The national re- 
pentance which succeeds the establishment of orders or mo- 
nopolies, gains only derision, and an aggravation of the 
evil ; none of the instruments of oppression are ever relin- 
quished without civil war ; and should they be introduced 
into the United States, we may certainly pronounce, that no 
other politician will have an opportunity of again congratu- 
lating this country on the discovery of conventions, until he 
has seen it drenched in blood. An attempt to persuade the 
elective system to yield to the hereditary, is an acknowledg- 
ment of its virtue ; and the constant refusal of the heredita- 
ry to hear or suffer reasoning against itself, manifests its 
vice. Goodness, and not wickedness, is attempted to be 
made the victim of scepticism. 

The recourse to conventions for the introduction of a 
government, bottomed upon the idea, that aristocracy is na- 
tural, surrenders the foundation of the whole theory. Is 
that natural which may or may not be created by a mode 
both novel and artificial ? This mode consists of an expres- 
sion of national will, by representation, and admits the right 
of national self government to be natural. Is aristocracy, 
30 obviously inconsistent with this right, also natural ? The 

21 



13* PRINCIPLES OF THE POLICY OF THE U. STATES, 

* reference to election and representation for obtaining na- 
tional will, in the momentous affair of changing the form of 
government, concedes, that it can be obtained in no other 
way. If election and representation exclusively merit na- 
tional confidence, when the consignment of power is great- 
est, why are they to be distrusted in inferiour agencies ? 

la 17S9, the admiration of Mr. Adams in contemplating 
the effects of our policy, broke forth with fervour and so- 
lemnity, in an inaugural address to the creatures of that po- 
licy ; and therefore it is probable, that he had relinquished 
his wish to destroy it by a convention previously expressed. 
The following extract from that address is not printed at 
the end of his treatise. 

« I should be destitute of sensibility, if upon my arrival 
" in this city, and presentation to this legislature, and es- 
" peeially to this senate, I could see, without emotion, so 
" many of those characters, of whose virtuous exertions I 
« have so often been a witness — from whose countenances 
** and examples I have ever derived encouragement and ani- 
" mation — whose disinterested friendship has supported 
** me in many intricate conjunctures of publick affairs, at 
" home and abroad : Those celebrated defenders of the 
« liberties of this country, whom menaces could not intimi- 
* 6 date, corruption seduce, nor flattery allure. Those in- 
46 trepid assertors of the rights of mankind, whose philoso- 
" phy and policy have enlightened the ivorld, in twenty years, 
i( more than it was ever before enlightened in many centu- 
" ries, by ancient schools, or modern universities." 

This eulogy is bestowed on our policy, as it had operat- 
ed previously to the existence of the present general govern- 
ment, under the auspices of election and representation. It 
would be quite un philosophical to assert, that Americans 
were insensible to the influence of intimidation, corruption 
and Hattery ; and therefore it must have been owing to our 
system of government, that its agents were uninfluenced by 
these vices. This is conceivable, by recollecting that our 
principle of division prevented an accumulation of power* 

/ 






A1TO OF THE ENGLISH POLICY. 155 

capable of intimidating ; that the system of paper and pa- 
tronage did not exist to corrupt; and that we had no mo- 
narchy or aristocracy, to corrupt election and buy despotism 
with publick money. It does not weaken the force of these 
observations to urge, that Mr. Adams chiefly refers in this 
part of the extract, to the arts and practices of the English 
system, in assailing ours. For he thereby debases that, 
and exalts ours, by allowing one to be a system, fitted for 
these vicious practices, and the other, fitted to resist them ; 
and he also admits that effects ensued, in the absence of 
causes propelling to these vices, differing' from those which 
their presence produces; of course such causes were not in- 
terwoven with our government. 

Our own governments, however, were exclusively the evi- 
dence of the following declaration , * those intrepid asser- 
•' tors of the rights of mankind, whose philosophy and po- 
" Key have enlightened the world, in twenty years, more 
«« than it was ever before enlightened in many centuries, by 
•'« ancient schools or modern universities." In what did this 
modern light, or the previous darkness consist? Will a 
mixture of the ignorance of many centuries, with this en- 
lightened policy, so recently invented, obscure, or render it 
more splendid ? In short, why has Mr. Adams, neglecting 
the wonderful discoveries of this modern philosophy in fa-, 
vour of human rights, arrayed against it a cloud of quota- 
tions, chiefly collected from the deepest tints of ancient ob- 
scurity ? Was it to explain, impress and accelerate a phi- 
losophy and policy, which had advanced more rapidly Mi 
twenty years than the philosophy and policy comprising his 
references had in twenty centuries ? 

The old school of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy 
is at issue with the new school, of modifying government 
with an aspect to moral qualities, and not to numerical or- 
ders. Mr. Adams's efforts and praises appear on the side 
of the new school ; his treatise, and his proposal to extin- 
guish the light of our policy, so dazzling in 1789, on the side 
of the old 5 like the strokes of father and son taking differ? 



156 PKINCIPLES OF THE POLICY OP THE U. STATES, 

ent sides in a civil war to save the estate, though felt by the 
parties, they balance each other in the controversy. 

It is necessary to understand thoroughly the ground of 
the controversy between « the philosophy and policy" of 
the United States, and of " ancient schools and modern 
universities," to discover wherein the darkness of the one, 
and the light of the other, called the old, and the new 
school, consisted. For this purpose, let us divest our minds 
of all perplexing modifications of the one, the few and the 
many ; of political terms tortured by construction ; and of 
every analysis hitherto suggested, and endeavour to enlight- 
en the controversy by considering, whether a government 
must not be founded in one or more simple elements, capable 
of ascertaining its nature, with great exactness. 

These consist, we believe, of fraud, force and reason ; 
the terra reason, being considered as conveying an idea of a 
nation governed by its own will, or of self government. The 
element of the Roman government was first fraud, and then 
force. The fraud consisted of the use made of superstition, 
and of the privileges, pillage and usurpations of the nobility. 
The indignation excited by this element, was artfully ma- 
naged by Julius and Augustus, to substitute the element 
of force for that of fraud. The government was called a 
republick, both before and after its elemental principle had 
changed ; and yet neither of its elemental principles resem- 
bled the element of reason, national will or self government. 
The catalogue of Italian republicks exhibits but one case 
resembling the Roman, which these little governments were 
frequently attempting to imitate. A variety exists in occa- 
sional acquisitions of superiority by the people ; but these 
left the government upon its old element, because noble or- 
ders still existed ; or because the division of election was 
wanting to prevent tumult and violence : or because elec- 
tion conveyed so much power as to induce the officer to 
practice fraud or force. So long as feudal tenure, supersti- 
tion and ignorance flourished in England, the element of its 
government was a mixture of fraud and force. And here is 



AND OF THE ENGLISH FOLIJCT, 157 

an instance, similar to which, many might be quoted, of a 
change in the form, without any in the element of the go- 
vernment. Executive power, armies- and patronage have 
beaten feudality out of the field, and the fraud of supersti- 
tion is superseded by the fraud of paper stock ; yet the ele- 
ments of the government are unchanged. 

Now if the elements of these governments, are not the 
elements of ours, then it is inferred, that the element of 
ours is not that of any government ancient or modern ; be- 
cause none can be adduced, not deeply participating of the 
same elements, with the governments quoted. 

This brings us to the principles of the old and the new 
school ; one founds government in the elements of force and 
fraud, by always bestowing power, so as to induce it to rest 
on those elements ; the other bestows power, so as to secure 
its dependence on national will, and compels it to consult 
national reason. The essential difference of the principles 
of these two schools, causes the terms and phrases of the 
old to perplex rather than edify, the disciples of the new ; 
because, when governments are founded on different ele- 
ments, it is incorrect to reason upon their theory or effects, 
as if there was a similitude between them. A. similitude 
exists between force and fraud, as being both vicious ; these 
are proper subjects for comparison ; but between force or 
fraud, and reason or self government, no similitude exists ; 
because they possess no common quality. The very system 
of reasoning, therefore, pursued by Mr. Adams throughout 
his treatise, is erroneous, as being founded in comparison 
instead of contrast. No inference, which is the result of a 
comparison between dissimilar objects, can be relied on ; 
whereas, the more dissimilar objects are, the more forcible 
will every argument be, which results from contrast. 

Contrast alone is capable of producing the old and the 
new political schools, in fair competition ; comparison, on 
the other hand, is the most dangerous weapon, with which 
the old can avenge its malevolence upon the new, for being 
'" an intrepid asserter of the rights of man." For what can 



158 PRINCIPLES OF THE POLICY OF THE V. STATES, 

30 completely blast the laurels with which Mr. Adams has 
himself exultingly crowned the American patriots, as the 
doctrine, that our new principles of policy, are similar to 
the old? 

Let us apply the test of contrast to a few details, and if 
they will bear it, we may conclude with confidence, that no 
such ill boding similitude exists* 

Upon our policy superstition has no influence ; upon the 
ancient, its impression was powerful. In the first, there are 
no hereditary or privileged orders; in the second, they 
abounded. By the first, power is made responsible by divi- 
sion : in the second, either the use of division was unknown, 
or it was ineifectually applied. The first is enabled by the 
art of printing, to use the knowledge of a nation : the se- 
cond used its ignorance. Formerly, the oracles of the 
Pythia, the flight of birds, the pecking of chickens, and the 
driving of nails into the capital, were the arguments offered 
by governments to nations ; now, reasoning, and not mira- 
cle, is used to beget opinion. Then, democracy being galled 
by the injuries of orders, upon casually breaking her fet- 
ters, disclosed the fury which oppression inspires,- now, the 
democracy of the United States, if it is one, seeing only 
compeers, and suffering only the gentle chastening inflicted 
by herself, has for many years displayed rather the docility 
of an elephant, than the ferocity of a tiger. 

Reasoning from contrast, and not from comparison 
would also have disclosed with greater perspicuity, the dif- 
ferences between existing governments. Thus it would 
have unavoidably appeared, that in Europe, the elements of 
government continue to be force and fraud. The fraud and 
force of superstition, were overthrown by being discovered ; 
wherefore it was necessary to invent a fraud, wider in its 
influence, and a force, physically stronger ; this was done 
by paper and patronage and by standing armies. 

The policy of the United States has laboured to prevent 
the introduction of force by armies, and of fraud by corrup- 
tion ; and to secure an allegiance of the government to the 



AND OF THE ENGLISH POLICY. 159 

understandings of the people, and not an allegiance of the 
people by force or fraud, to the will of the government. 
Evincing that reason, and not fraud or force, is its element. 

Governments, whose elements are fraud or force, will 
naturally excite the evil qualities of human nature ; and 
those whose element is reason, can only excite its good. 
And if every government must rely for continuance, either 
on force or fraud, or on reason ; it follows that every go- 
vernment must be founded in good or in evil moral princi- 
ples. 

To defend the elements of force and fraud, it has been 
said, (i that man is naturally vicious, and his own worst 
« enemy ; and that this self-malignity disqualifies him for 
" self government, and can only be restrained by force or 
« fraud." 

The analysis contended for, admits that human nature 
is compounded of good and evil qualities, and hence it is not 
merely allowed, but strenuously contended throughout this 
essay, that government ought to be modelled with a view to 
the preservation of the good and the control of the evil. 
All nations have published their concurrence in this opinion*, 
by establishing and enforcing municipal law, for the purpose 
of restraining private vices ; and all (the United States ex- 
cepted) have hitherto failed to discover a code of political 
law, calculated to restrain publick vices. By publick vices 
and political law, I mean, injuries committed by govern- 
ments against nations, and regulations to prevent or punish 
them. 

As the vices, the virtues, the passions and the interests 
of mankind are multiplied by civilization, the necessity for 
multiplying both kinds of law, gradually increaseso In an 
indigent or savage state, few laws, municipal or political, 
suffice ; because few interests exist to awaken our evil pro- 
pensities. Therefore simple and unlimited forms of go- 
vernment, and few municipal laws, universally accompany 
such a state of society. But whenever society advances in 
*he arts of civilization, and the interests of men are multf* 



160 PRINCIPLES OP THE POLICY OF THE IT. STATES, 

plied by wealth and commerce, the number and complexity 
of municipal laws must be increased, to meet the case of a 
new moral character. It is equally necessary to suppress 
the simple forms of government, which required no res- 
traints, where there were no temptations ; and to invent 
new political laws, analogous also to this new moral charac- 
ter, in order to counteract the force of these new tempta- 
tions. 

In every state of society, the vices of the individuals who 
administer the government, will, in relation to publick duties, 
be as great, and probably much greater, than will be the 
vices of those who do not administer it, in relation to private 
duties. Solicitations and excitements to avarice and ambi- 
tion, will be offered to publick officers by the view of a rich 
nation, constituting temptations to vice, superior to any 
which can occur in private life. Therefore, political law 
should not only keep pace with municipal law, to provide 
for this new state of society ; but the former ought to out- 
strip the latter in energy, in the same proportion as the vi- 
olations of publick duties are likely to outstrip those of pri- 
vate, by reason of the superiority of the temptation. 

The effects of this temptation, are seen in the history of 
most nations, to be exactly graduated by their cause. In a 
poor nation, the temptation being small, publick duties are 
seldom violated ; and such violations are more frequent and 
more wicked, as a nation increases in opulence : proving 
that the appetite of the individuals who exercise a govern- 
ment, for gratifications arising from a breach of duty, is 
within the power of a poor nation, and beyond the power of 
a rich one, to satisfy. 

The political elements, force and fraud, are begotten by 
national opulence, because nations have only provided new 
municipal laws to control the private vices produced also 
by this opulence ; and have neglected to provide new politi- 
cal laws against the more injurious publick vices arising 
from the same cause. For private vices, they have provide 
ed the prison and the gallow* ; for publick vices, wealth and 



ANB OF THE ENGLISH POLICY. 16| 

power. Can these contradictory remedies for similar evils 
be both effectual ? 

The United States, beholding this as an erroneous po- 
licy ; and despairing of producing good manners, or a re- 
gard for private duties, by infusing into government the 
strongest solicitations to disregard publick duties ; endea- 
vour to secure the morality of government, as the best se- 
curity against the licentiousness of the people. They for- 
bear to excite ambition and avarice by hereditary orders, or 
seperate interests ; and provide against both, by election, 
responsibility and division of power. They exclude the vi- 
cious moral qualities, fear and superstition, as elements of 
government ; and select for its basis, the most perfect mo- 
ral quality of human nature. 

It is as true, that a government may be vicious, as that 
a people may be vicious. By all hereditary systems, the 
people are placed extremely within the power of the go- 
vernment, and the government extremely without the pow- 
er of the people ; and a dereliction of the idea of political 
law, is considered as necessary to the existence of stronger 
rigorous municipal law. The utmost proposed by such 
systems is, to submit in despair to the effects of a vicious 
government, for the sake of curbing the vices of the people. 

But the United States have aimed at a policy, possessing 
a capacity for regulating publick, as well as private duties ; 
considering that government as weak, which can only regu- 
late the latter ; and that as strong, which is able to regu- 
late both. For this purpose, they are cautious to bestow 
on each officer and department of government, only that 
portion of power, necessary to fulfil the annexed functions ; 
to make these officers and departments, all dependent upon 
the nation or a section of it ; and to enable the government 
to enforce the laws upon the individuals of the society. A 
policy by which the nation is considered as the executive of 
political law, and tlie avenger of violations of public^ duties ; 
and the government as the executive of municipal law. and 
the avenger of violations of private duties. 

22 



163 PRINCIPLES OP THE POLICY OP THE IT. STATES, 

The contrast between this policy and the English, boil* 
in energy and perfection, is evident and forcible. One is 
able to prevent or punish the crimes which governments 
meditate or commit against nations, and also those commit- 
ted by individuals ; the other is unable to prevent or punish 
the first class of crimes, and even to punish the second, ex- 
cept hy exciting the first. If the element of a government 
is force or fraud, it is obvious that the most pernicious class 
of crimes, namely, those perpetrated against nations by go- 
vernments, are excited and not prevented or punished. 
But our policy provides both against the great injuries to! 
which nations are liable from governments, and the small 
injuries which individuals may suffer from each other ; 
conceiving a government to be weak and defective, however 
it may defend individuals against robbery and murder, 
which is unable to defend nations against oppression and 
despotism; and one to be stronger and more perfect, which, 
instead of exciting great crimes, for the purpose of punish- 
ing small, provides against both. A code of political law, 
too feeble to enforce publiek duties, or to restrain publick of- 
fences, will form an ambitious and avaricious government ; 
and the vicious moral qualities of such a government, will 
corrupt the manners of the people ; but an energetick code 
of political law, by producing political morality, will re-act 
wholesomely upon private manners by the channels of in- 
fluence and imitation. A policy which fosters publick, ie 
order to control private vices, is in contrast with one, 
which enforces publick duties, as an inducement to general 
good manners. One submits to the justice it dispenses, the 
other punishes the crimes it creates. 

The indissoluble ligament between cause and effect, is 
evidently on the side of Uiq possibility of training a govern- 
ment by moral principles. That moral causes are able to 
control the moral nature of man, and that in the form of 
government, they have universally controlled it, are the 
sources from whence the reasoning of this essay is deduced. 
If the surprising regularity with which the characters of 



AND OF THE ENGLISH POLICY. 165 

governments have been graduated by their principles, and 
the astonishing force of these principles in corrupting or 
purifying the characters of magistrates, had only been de- 
monstrated in the persons of American governours and he* 
reditary monarchs, it ought to invigorate the human mind 
to keep possession of the ground it has already gained, and 
to push its discoveries still farther into the political terra 
incognita. 



i ± 6 * 1 



SECTION THE THIRD. 



THE EVIL MORAL PRINCIPLES OF THE GOVERN- 
MENT OF THE UNITED STATES. 



XiET us venture to explore this country. Moral princi- 
ples constitute the criterion for estimating the nature of a 
form of government. The number or arrangement of its 
administrators are such evidences of its nature, as the num- 
ber and arrangement of a parterre of flowers, are of their 
botanical characters. Each species of the ancient analysis 
is bad. An analysis, which neither discloses the best, or 
even a good form of government, is suspicious, and excites 
a doubt, whether one of its evils, or a mixture of all three, 
is the true remedy against another. If the numerical ana= 
lysis of government was superseded by one composed of 
principles, our attention would be attracted towards those 
principles. Mankind would estimate them, and discover 
which would infuse good, and which bad qualities. This 
classification of principles, would enable them to class go- 
vernments, with equal precision; and the oscillation be 
tween forms, all bad, would cease. 

The first part of this essay was appropriated to the es- 
tablishment of a correct idea of aristocracy, and to unfold 
ing the principles of the most eminent forms of government, 
ancient and modern, quoted by Mr. Adams : and the second, 
to an exhibition of the wide and substantial difference be- 
tween these principles, and those of our policy ; of Mr. 
Adams's inaccuracy in coercing the policy of the United 
States within the pale of the English balances, by the help 
of the old numerical analysis : and of the influence of moral 
principles upon the nature of governments. If such an in- 
fluence exists, nothing can be more important to a nation 
than to understand it. 



THE EVIL MORAL PRINCIPLES, &C. 165 

As the progress in political knowledge cannot be conti- 
nued, except by an unremitting vigilance to discover inter- 
polations of bad political principles among good, several 
sections will be appropriated to that object ; reserving the 
pleasure of commemorating the beauties of our policy, as a 
compensation for discharging this irksome duty. 

A dissection of our operating policy, however unplea- 
sant, must be useful. We are indebted to the knife of the 
anatomist for a knowledge of the human body; this know- 
ledge would have been infinitely more necessary, had men 
made men ; without it, all human constitutions would have 
been rendered unsound, by mismatching their parts. Men 
do make governments, and have universally created un- 
sound political bodies, by patching together hereditary or- 
ders and election, or seperate interests and election ; not 
perceiving, that one of these qualities has never failed to 
poison or maim the other. 

But before we proceed to the proposed criticism, the test 
for detecting the nonconformity of any part to the element 
of our policy, must be again brought before the reader. It 
must be thoroughly understood to estimate our remarks. 
This consists of a political analysis built upon the moral 
foundation, that men are naturally both virtuous and vici- 
ous ; and that they possess a power of regulating motives, 
or electing principles, which will cultivate either virtue or 
vice. Upon this ground, government is concluded to be a 
moral agent, which will be actuated by good or evil moral 
qualities ; and that its qualities will certainly correspond 
with the principles by which it is created. 

An eminent author, contends for a moral necessity, and 
a passiye obedience to motives, uncontrollable hy the agent. 
This essay proceeds upon an opinion, that man can regulate 
motives, and enjoys a volition, adequate to the election of 
virtue, and the rejection of vice. Mr. Godwin allows man 
to owe duties. He ought, says that author, to deliver truth 
" with a spirit of universal kindness, with no narrow resent- 



k66 THE EVIL MORAL PRINCIPLES OF THE 

« ( merits or angry invectives."* If he is the passive instrik* 
ment of motives beyond his control, and deprived of volition^ 
is it not unreasonable to require of him duties which he has 
no power to fulfil ? 

He farther observes, « that man is not originally vici- 
ous."! "What then made him so ? His motives impelled 
him to commit evil. Whence came these motives ? If 
they followed man naturally, the assertion is untenable ; if 
not, they must be artificial or facticious, voluntary and sub- 
ject to election. Again. " Ambition is common to all 
men.":): Is this vice, both universal, and also not natural or 
original ? If it is factitious or voluntary, why may not the 
factitious principle of dividing power, so confidently con- 
demned by Mr. Godwin, control it ? But whether it is vo- 
luntary or involuntary, it may be inflamed, regulated or 
suppressed by motives. If a man is merely the automaton 
of motives, a nation may operate upon the individuals who 
are publick agents, by a set of motives calculated to impel to 
virtue or vice. Division and responsibility will impel to 
virtue ; aggregated or undivided power will impel to vice. 
And if the doctrine of necessity and a passive obedience to 
motives is true, mankind only have to expose their govera- 
ours to such as excite to good, and to shield them against 
those which excite to evil. 

It is certainly true, that man is invariably guided by 
motives; and though it may be questioned, whether an indi- 
vidual has a power of creating or controlling his own mo- 
tives, yet it cannot be denied, that others are able to influ- 
ence him by motives which they can regulate. Those who 
compose governments or laws, may infuse into them mo- 
tives to excite avarice and ambition, or liberality and patri- 
otism. 

But however metaphysicians may amuse the learned, 
by arguments in relation to fate and free will, politicians 
ought to be guided by the obvious and active qualities of 
human n ature. In supposing moral events to be capable of 

* God. Po. Jus. v. 1, 245. f v. g, 203- * v. 1, 328. 



GOtEfctfMESrT 0* THE V. STATES* 1#7 

regulation by causes which men can govern, such as know- 
ledge, division of wealth and power, and responsibility ; ami 
in supposing the moral qualities of man to be good and evil, 
and that either one or the other may be excited 5 there is 
no deviation from the ostensible phenomena of human na- 
ture. And as government is exercised by man, all its vir- 
tues and vices must be human ; wherefore, there does not 
seem more difficulty in ascertaining the principles or quali- 
ties which will constitute a good or a bad government, than 
in ascertaining those which will constitute a good or a bad 
man ; nor more impropriety in reducing all governments to 
the two classes, of those founded in good, and those found- 
ed in evil moral principles, than in reducing all men to the 
two classes of good and bad. Bad or good principles may 
be infused into governments by constitutions, with more cer- 
tainty than into men by education ; and therefore a govern- 
ment corrupted by an infusion of bad principles, can more 
justly complain of the nation for making it wicked, than the 
nation can complain of the government for making it 
miserable. 

It was not the policy nor intention of the United States 
to excite the evil qualities of ambition or avarice, but to 
suppress them ; nor to form a government compounded of 
parts, some of which would be calculated to excite these 
qualities, so as to produce a perpetual spirit of discord and 
uneasiness, similar to what passes in that man's mind, whose 
virtues and vices are in a state of warfare with each other. 

Yet, it would have been wonderful, in the first experi- 
ment to erect a government upon good moral principles and 
the right of self-rule, if no oversight had happened. It 
would have been more wonderful, if no impression had been 
made by a depreciated debt, which from pebbles in the 
ocean of society, might, by a species of political diving, be 
made pearls in the hands of individuals. It might have 
been known, that patronage and power in a president, to a 
certain extent, would destroy division and responsibility ; 
hnt the extent to which it eo»ld be carried under the con- 



id§ THE EVIL MORAL PRINCIPLES OF THE 

stitution, might not have been foreseen. It might have 
been known, that an accumulation of vast wealth in few 
hands, by any means whatever, would create a faction or 
aristocracy, which would absorb power correspondent to 
that wealth, and gradually exchange the principles of our 
government for force and fraud; but such an accumulation 
might not have been intended. 

That part of our policy called « the constitution of the 
United States," was suggested by the considerations of union 
and peace, of uniformity in commercial regulations, and of 
a revenue for general purposes. To alter or destroy or 
political morality or self government, and to substitute for 
it the principle of force or fraud, was not a motive for cre- 
ating the constitution of the United States, expressed by 
any state convention, avowed by any individual, or conceiv- 
ed by the people. 

On the contrary, apprehensions, lest some parts of the 
general constitution might on trial be found to incline from 
our good political elements towards those of force and fraud, 
were assuaged by special amendments to prevent it ; and by 
a multitude of arguments to prove, that as titled orders 
were forbidden, legislative appropriations of in oney requir- 
ed, armies subjected to a duemiial provision, and religion 
and the liberty of the press secured, self government and 
these elements were placed upon impregnable ground. 

If, on trial, it is discovered, that the slightest inclination 
does exist, in any of its parts, towards the elements of force 
or fraud, these parts violate the national intention, and 
ought to be revised ; because a tendency towards a political 
point, if unobstructed, will arrive at that point. Accumu- 
lation and permanence of power or wealth, arouse and ex- 
cite certain evil moral qualities, which perpetually strive 
to govern by the principles of force and fraud ; and so far 
from being instruments calculated to maintain governments 
founded in good moral principles and self government, they 
are instruments calculated for their destruction. 



GOVERNMENT OF THE IT. STATB&, £6$ 

The executive power of the United States is infected, as 
we shall endeavour to shew, with a degree of accumulation 
and permanence of power, sufficient to excite evil moral 
qualities. The form of an executive power constituted no 
motive for the general government, nor will an alteration in 
that form, defeat or counteract the ends intended to be ob^ 
tained. Amendments, which will secure the fundamental 
principles of our policy, and the essential objects of the ge- 
neral constitution itself, may be resorted to with safety, and 
are the best resources against their loss. 

To prove that the form of executive power was not a 
recommendation of the general constitution, it need o^ly be 
observed, that it is not copied by a single state. The 
governours of nine states, comprising a majority of the peo- 
ple, are annually chosen, and are ineligible after certain 
terms ; those of the other states are chosen for two and 
three years, one excepted ; and a multitude of other im- 
portant differences exist, between the modification of exe- 
cutive power, under the general and the state constitutions. 

The continuance of these differences, proves, that the 
form of executive power under the general constitution , 
was suffered for the sake of acquiring those of its objects, 
which the nation had in view ; and that this form, had it 
been proposed alone and unconnected with other principles, 
would have heen rejected by every state in the union. 

It is therefore proper to consider, whether the executive 
power of the United States is so moulded, as to be calculate 
ed for awakening man's evil moral qualities, and for pro- 
pelling us towards the political elements offeree and fraud j 
because the principles of our policy ought not to be contami- 
nated and destroyed by its details. 

Experience having ascertained, that executive power in 
most state forms, does not awaken individual ambition and 
avarice for the annoyance of society ; and executive power 
m the general farm, having been created by the merit of 
>ther articles of the general constitution, it is time to con 
sklee, whether we shall persevere in applying the principle? 

23 



170 THE EVIL MORAX PRINCIPLES OF THE 

of division, responsibility and rotation, to state executives, 
commanding little patronage, little military power, and lit- 
tle territory, and continue to relax from them in the case of 
the general executive, guiding a patronage, a military force 
and a territory of great extent. Whether we shall adhere 
to the inconsistency of sustaining innumerable fortresses to 
defend our liberty in a quarter where it cannot be assault- 
ed ; and of levelling most of them with the ground, in that, 
whence danger is imminent. 

Election is almost the only barrier opposed to executive 
ambition in the United States. Alone, it has universally 
been insufficient. Marius, Sylla, Pompey, Csesar, Crom- 
well and Bonaparte were elected. The English House of 
Commons, and the French legislatures under several forois, 
were elected. Election furnished in all these cases, the 
means for introducing or exercising tyranny. By convey- 
ing too much power, or consolidating within a narrow com- 
pass, the power it did convey, it awakened or excited ambi- 
tion and avarice. The terrors of impeachment, attainder, 
banishment or death, were added to election in these instan- 
ces ; and these threats only accelerated the transition from 
patriotism to power, as the fortress for guilt. Monarch s 
elect their civil and military officers, but seldom trust to 
their power of election, though strengthened by a perpetual 
power of removal, for safety. They are cautious not t© 
accumulate power, or to continue great power for a long 
time in the same hands. They divide it. They disconti- 
nue and exchange the most dangerous officers. If they ne- 
glect these precautions, they are dethroned. The people 
have fewer means of detecting ambitious designs than 
monarchs ; national sovereignty must therefore be dethron- 
ed, if it relaxes from precautions, necessary to preserve the 
sovereignty of monarchs. 

It is the insufficiency of election, exclusively, to secure 
political liberty, which lias suggested to mankind a multi- 
tude of other expedients ; and Mr. Adams, concurring with 
experience as to this insufficiency, proposes the theory of 



GOVERNMENT OF THE U. STATES. lf% 

orders, and the practice of a division of power among these 
orders, as an additional security. 

The necessity of applying the principle of division to 
power, to keep it responsible, is thus acknowledged; and the 
mode of this application only remains to be considered. 
This ought to be accommodated to the policy of the country. 
It is the policy of England to consider the government as 
invested with all political power ; hence the principle of 
division could reach no farther, than a distribution of power 
among the departments of government. It is our policy to 
consider the people as retaining a vast share of political 
power, and as only investing their government with so much 
as they deem necessary for their own benefit. Admitting, 
therefore, that it may be consistent with the English poli- 
cy to mould executive power, by a computation of the por- 
tion of power possessed by the Lords and Commons; it 
would be inconsistent with our policy to mould it by any 
similar computation. We do not balance power against 
power. It is our policy to reduce it by division, in order to 
preserve the political power of the people, by forbearing to 
excite the ambition and avarice of individuals. 

This new application of division, to an allotment of po- 
litical power between a nation and its government, was sug<- 
gested to us, hj its intricacy if confined to an allotment 
among departments of government; it was seen, that om- 
nipotent political power in a government, however theoreti- 
cally divided, would become practically consolidated. The 
people, after this species of division of power, retain the 
importance and sovereignty of Lear, after he had divided 
his kingdom among his three daughters. 

To preserve our unexampled division of power between 
the nation and the government, a multitude of other divi- 
sions became necessary, and these were intended to be made, 
not for the purpose of a balance of power between depart- 
ments, but by preventing such an accumulation as to awaken 
ambition, to defend the sovereignty of the people against all. 



172 THE EVIL MORAL PRINCIPLES OP THE 

The insufficiency of election to prevent great power 
from awakening evil qualities, has induced the people in 
their state governments to superadd many auxiliaries drawn 
from the principle of division. Rotation, plural executives, 
frequency of election, and a limited patronage, are among 
them. The efficacy of these auxiliaries, having been evinc- 
ed by more than thirteen states for thirty years, is equiva- 
lent to an experience of one nation for four hundred years. 
Before an experience of twelve years had passed over, in 
the case of the executive power of the union, under a relax- 
ation of our principle of division, a majority of the United 
States have agreed in perceiving in it, an inclination to- 
wards principles inimical to our policy. It follows, that 
the state mode of forming an executive power, will uniform- 
ly bring into publick use man's good moral qualities for at 
least four hundred years ; and that the mode adopted by the 
general constitution, will awaken his evil, in twelve. Divi- 
sion of power, is the cause of one effect, and its accumula- 
tion of the other. 

History or fact corroborates this estimate. Compare 
two hundred successive emperours or kings, with the two 
hundred state governours who have probably existed since 
the revolution. Fewer tyrants will be found among the 
governours, than patriots among the monarchs. If a soli- 
tary royal patriot should occur, not a single tyrannical! 
governour exists to contrast him. The principle of a divi- 
sion of power has been applied to the governours, and ne 
glected in the case of the kings. Do these facts prove the 
wisdom of deviating from the precedent of American gov- 
ernours, and inclining towards that of English kings, in 
moulding executive power, or demonstrate its consequences ? 

The extent of this inclination in the executive power of 
the United States, will result from a comparison between a 
king of England and a president. This king cannot create 
Offices, inflict taxes, pass laws, or raise armies; neither can 
the president. This king can appoint officers, disburse tax- 
es, recommend laws, and command armies ; so can the pre- 



GOVERNMENT OF THE IT. STATES. 17$ 

sident. This king can make treaties under the check of two 
legislative branches ; the president can make treaties under 
the check of one. This king can appoint the members of 
the legislature to lucrative offices ; so can the president : 
and in both cases an appointment vacates the seat. This 
king appoints the judges, and the officers who appoint the 
juries ; so does the president. Executive power in the 
English form, has sufficed to introduce and establish the 
political elements of fraud and force. But the king of Eng- 
land is not elective. The ineffieacy of election, to prevent 
the abuse of accumulated power, has been shewn; we see 
its ineffieacy in the House of Commons, to shield the people 
against the oppressions of the English executive power. 
But the king of England, in the exercise of his patronage, 
is not checked by a senate. The corruption of two wealthy 
and numerous legislative bodies in England, is no proof, 
that a small and poor one in America, can repel the addres- 
ses of an executive, glittering with prerogatives similar to 
those which have dazzled all the English patriots for a cen- 
tury past. 

Both the English king and our president are the exclu- 
sive managers of negociation ; and secrecy is their common 
maxim. By negociation, foreign governments may be pro- 
voked ; by secrecy, a government may delude and knead a 
people into a rage for war ; and war is a powerful instru- 
ment for expelling the element of self government, and in- 
troducing that of force. This has been recently demon- 
strated in France. By negociation, secrecy and war, trai- 
tors convert a national detestation of tyranny into a tool for 
making tyrants. 

The assembly of Virginia, in their resolutions of Decem- 
ber 1798, after stating " that a spirit has in sundry instances 
." been manifested by the federal government, to enlarge its 
(( powers," concludes « so as to consolidate the states by 
* degrees, into one sovereignty, the obvious tendency and 
" inevitable result of which would be, to transform the pre- 
" sent republican system of the United States, into aa abso* 



174 THE EVIL MORAL PKlft&RLES OF THE 

« lute, or at best a mixed monarchy." The resolutions g£ 
the Kentucky legislature of November 1798, after stating a 
similar spirit in the federal government, observe "that 
w these, and successive acts of the same character, unless 
|< arrested at the threshold, may tend to drive these states 
?< into revolution and Mood, and will furnish new calumnies 
« against republican governments, and new pretexts for 
** those who wish it to be believed, that man cannot be gov- 
« erned but by a rod of iron"* 

The spirit which produced these tendencies towards 
monarchy, revolution, and an iron government, could only 
have been infused into the federal government by some prin- 
ciple of the general constitution. It was an evil moral 
spirit, and must therefore have proceeded from an evil 
moral cause. The concurrence of Congress in the mea- 
sures charged with this spirit, is a proof of the great ad- 
Tances already made by executive influence, and the confi- 
dence of monarchists in executive power. And as a spirit 
propelling us towards monarchy, revolution and an iron 
government, appeared only after the great accumulation of 
executive power by the general constitution, the magician 
who raised it cannot be mistaken. 

We have endeavoured to prove, that the elements of 
every government consisted of good or evil moral princi* 
pies ; and that the shock received by superstition from 
knowledge, and by feudality from alienation, has reduced 
the political competitors for human preference to the sys- 
tem of division and responsibility, or to that of paper and 
patronage; the first suggested by self government, the se- 
cond by the elements of fraud and force. 

The measures arising from the spirit early infused into 
executive power by its American form, were, armies, war, 
penal laws, and an increase of executive power by law, 
loans, banks, patronage and profusion. These are English 
effects, and evil effects. Do they proceed from no moral 

* The Virginia resolutions were drawn by Mr. Madison ; the Kentucky 
^esolutions, by Mr. Jefferson. 



tfOVERtfMBNT OF THE V. STATES. 17b 

cause, or is that cause unlike the cause of the same English 
effects ? or, is it good, though its effects are evil ? 

They are the genuine issue of the elements of force and 
fraud, but infinitely exceeding in malignity the ancient ef- 
fects of these elements ; because the modern struggles of 
reason and self government compels tyranny to drive her 
screws deeper into the bowels of society, for the purpose of 
retaining it in bondage. If knowledge has taught tyranny 
new devices, without suggesting to liberty new defences, 
mankind will have to regret the loss of an ignorance, which 
cheapened the price and diminished the weight of their 
chains. It is infinitely less excruciating to be governed by 
imposture, than by armies, taxes, patronage and paper. 

The new defences, suggested by knowledge, against 
these modern devices of tyranny, were zealously enforced 
by the United States in their seperate governments, and in 
their first general government. The old Congress held the 
executive power of the Union. It was a plural executive, 
annually appointed, liable to recall, ineligible after three 
years, incapable of holding any other office, of little civil 
patronage, and extremely limited in military patronage ; 
the states being invested with the appointment of all the of- 
ficers of an army, except generals ; and it successfully sur- 
mounted a period of war, longer, and attended with more 
difficulties, than is recollected to have occurred to any mo* 
narchical executive. All these defences, suggested by divi- 
sion and responsibility, were surrendered in the formation 
of the new executive, and many new powers were conferred 
upon that branch of government. They were overlooked, 
because we were dazzled by the prospect of permanent 
union. The sponsors for liberty, were forgotten in the 
general joy; and a president of the United States was in- 
vested with far greater powers than sufficed to Ciesar for 
enslaving his country. Patronage, hegociation, a negative 
upon laws, and a paper system, render some of those talents 
which Csesar possessed, unnecessary to enable a president 
fn perform what Caesar effected. 



176 THE BYIL M0R.4& PRISHCIPIES OF THE 

The sufficiency of the means, at the disposal of execu- 
tive power, to produce a revolution, will induce people tc 
look out sharply for the event ; many will hasten to aban- 
don old principles, and court the favour of new ; and a 
monarchy may suddenly start into existence, even by the 
acclamation of a multitude, who will sacrifice their princi- 
ples to their hopes or their fears. By weakening these 
means, republicanism and loyalty to our political principles 
will be invigorated. 

Election, instead of being any security against accumu- 
lated power, derives its efficacy from an union with division 
of power. Certain metals, compounded in due proportions, 
produce by fusion a more impenetrable mass, than either 
seperately ; so election and division of pow r er, politically 
mingled, are mutually rendered more effectual. An accu- 
mulation of executive power is precisely the contrary prin- 
ciple to that, which alone bestows efficacy upon election. 
The influence of this accumulation is already so visible, that 
candidates canvass, not upon the ground of knowledge, vir- 
tue and independence, but of devotedness to a president. 

Election and constitutional precept, are both a species of 
didactick sanction, only to be enforced by a division of pow- 
er ; not by its division or balance among orders, but by pre- 
venting such an accumulation in the hands of an individual, 
an order, or a department, as will awaken man's vicious 
qualities, and through them cause election to be converted 
into an instrument of fraud and oppression. The division 
of power among three orders, has failed in every instance 
to bestow efficacy upon election ; first, because, by that sys- 
tem, a government is invested with every conceivable politi- 
cal power 5 and secondly, because in a division of this end- 
less and enormous mass into three parts, the portion assign- 
ed to each order, must unavoidably suffice to awaken ambi- 
tion and avarice both in the order itself, and in those who 
seek its favours. If, therefore, in assigning power to the 
president, the general constitution has deviated in any de- 
gree from the idea of dividing power, for the purposes of 



GOVERNMENT OF THE V. STATES, 177 

keeping it manageable by the publick will, and of preventing 
an accumulation, sufficient to excite man's evil qualities $ 
or if it has inclined in any degree towards the idea of divid- 
ing it by the scheme of a balance among orders of men, or 
orders of power ; experience proves that the efficacy of 
election will be correspondently weakened. The English 
example proves, that election, united with a division of pow^ 
er, according to the balancing scheme, is even capable of 
being converted into the most powerful instrument for ty- 
ranny. It is our policy so to divide power, as to place eve- 
ry publick officer, isolated in the midst of the publick will ; 
and not to provide for him the support of corruption, of an 
order, or of a faction, to weaken the utility of election. 

An army and patronage enables a president to provide a 
faction. An army is the strongest of all factions, and com- 
pletely the instrument of a leader, skilful enough to enlist 
its sympathies, and inflame its passions. It is given to a 
president, and election is the only surety that he will not use 
it, as armies have ever been used. The precept, « that 
money should not be appropriated for the use of an army, 
for a longer term than two years," is like that which for- 
bid Csesar to open the treasury. 

The other precept, « that the military shall be subject 
to the civil power," would have superseded the principle of 
division, if armies could have been controlled by precept, 
or if precept could have been enforced by election ; and if 
precepts had sufficed to restrain an ability to violate them, 
it would have superseded a necessity for civil government. 
The army is the creature of law. So were the armies of 
Cfesar, Cromwell and Bonaparte ; and so, at this moment, 
are the armies of all existing governments, of which force 
is an element. The banner of usurpation and tyranny is 
usually lioisted by a legal army ; a legal army is the in- 
strument for giving permanency to the evil political princi- 
ples, fraud and force ; and at no time, has a standing mer- 
cenary army been the steady auxiliary of national self gov- 

nent, or obedient to election. It obeys its leader. 



178 THE EVIL MOEAX PRINCIPLES OP THE 

An army constitutes a mass of power, which has fre- 
quently proved too hard for the whole residuary power of 
a government. Military power, is at least as able to en- 
slave a nation as civil power. To civil power our policy 
has copiously applied the principle of division ; to military, 
two precepts. Civil power is distributed into a multitude 
of hands ; military is condensed and accumulated in one. 
The patronage of civil offices is divided among, the people* 
the general aud state governments, and many sections of 
these governments ; the entire patronage of military offices 
is bestowed on the president. To civil power we have ap- 
plied the principle of division, to military that of accu- 
mulation. 

A distribution of military patronage, would be some im- 
pediment to executive usurpation ; but the only effectual 
mode of rendering military power subordinate to national 
will, is precisely analogous to that used for rendering civil 
power subordinate to national will. The latter is effected 
by dividing political power between the nation and the gov- 
ernment, so as to invest the nation with a portion sufficient 
to control the government; and thefomer can only be ef- 
fected, by dividing military power, so as to invest the na- 
tion with a portion, completely adequate to the coercion of 
an army. A nation, unable to control either its government 
or its army, is not free, nor is self government the element 
of its policy. 

Arms can only be controlled by arms. An armed nation 
only can keep up an army, and also maintain its liberty. 
The constitution of the United States, overlooking this un- 
deniable truth, has placed both the raising an army, and 
the arming of the militia, among the potential attributes of 
the general government ; whereas the first belonged to the 
principle of accumulation, and the latter to the principle of 
division. One, therefore, is a power, and the other a check 
upon that power. One is a foe, the other a friend to liberty. 
One strengthens the government, the other the nation. And 
a, sound militia makes a government dependent on the nation,: 



GOVERNMENT OE THE U. STATES. 179 

a bad one, a nation dependent on a government. An armed 
militia divides the power to raise mercenary armies ; where- 
fore governments, which can raise armies, will seldom be 
inclined to arm the militia ; and the general government has 
expended its praises on a militia, and the publick money- on 
an army, to an amount, sufficient to create the strongest 
militia, and the weakest army in the world* What stronger 
proof can exist of an affection for power and a dislike to du- 
ty in human nature, than a preference of the weakest ar- 
my to the strongest militia ? The president is a secret ne- 
gociator with foreign nations ; his monopoly of military 
patronage, impels him towards war, because war extends 
his patronage, and patronage is power. A strong solicita- 
tion, addressed to the passions of avarice or ambition, is an 
evil principle. He who could gratify ambition, by involv- 
ing a nation in war, may be confided in as a negociator, pre- 
cisely in the same degree, as he who could gratify avarice 
by conveying taxes into his own pocket, may be confided in 
to impose them. By removing from the publick negociator, 
the excitement of military patronage towards war, integrity 
of negociation would be obtained, and fraudulent pretexts 
for war avoided. 

The imbecility of the precautions against military pow- 
er, is a chasm in our policy, which jeopardises every precau- 
tion we have invented to prevent usurpation and tyranny. 
Military power awakens and excites man's evil qualities, 
more than any other species of power, because it is less re- 
sistible ; hence its malignity to good moral principles and 
the element of self government. 

The regulation of religion, and the establishment of no- 
bility, are among the powers prohibited ; the military pow- 
er is not even divided, and is only subjected in a state of 
complete accumulation, to the suffrages of an unarmed peo- 
ple. Religion and nobility, as state engines, might have 
been more safely left to the restriction of election, than an 
army, because they are thoroughly at enmity with publick 
opinion, and unpossessed of physical force. By resting for 



£80 THE EVI1 MORAI PRINCIPLES OP THE 

security against military power, upon the naked force of 
election, all powers, (including the eases of religion and no- 
bility) whether prohibited or limited, are in fact deposited 
under the same naked security. Military power being ca- 
pable of destroying constitutional precepts, the security of 
all such precepts depends upon the precautions used to se- 
cure the responsibility of military power. 

Had the constitution secured the responsibility of an ar- 
my to the national will, by requiring the duty of arming the 
nation to be fulfilled, before the power of raising an army 
was exercised ; the freedom of the press and of religion, 
would have been safer without a prohibitory clause, than 
with one, accompanied by an undivided military power. By 
rendering an army responsible, election is free ; and whilst 
election is free, no security for religion and the press can be 
better than election j but it is no security against the Mill 
of an army, fettered with precepts, and unfettered by arms. 
The constitution even neglects the least precaution, for pre- 
venting an army from being used against the government ; 
a case entirely beyond the compass to which the most en- 
thusiastick theory can extend the force of election. 

An armed nation only can protect its government against 
an army. Unarmed, and without an army, a nation invites 
invasion. Unarmed, and with an army, it invites usurpa- 
tion. All nations lose their liberties by invasion or usurpa- 
tion. The elective franchise of an unarmed nation, lies be- 
tween these alternatives. How mercenary armies protect 
liberty, has been recently demonstrated in France \ and how 
they defend nations, all over Europe. 

Division can only be brought to bear upon military 
power, by a compulsory constitutional mandate for arming 
the nation, and by scattering military patronage. For the 
latter, the former confederation affords one precedent, and 
another appears in the prudence even of the phlegmatick 
Dutch, who had foresight enough, in the early dawnings of 
civil liberty, to withhold from their stadtb older the appoint 
znent ef generals. 



GOTERNMENT OF THE V. STATES. 48i 

The military power and patronage of the president, is 
formidable ; united with his treaty power, it becomes more 
formidable ; but to determine whether the principle of di- 
vision or accumulation prevails in the structure of our gene- 
ral executive, it must also be recollected, that the president 
appoints judges, ambassadors, and a multitude of other civil 
officers, grants pardons, governs the treasury, convenes con- 
gress, recommends and negatives laws. Let it be also kept 
in mind, that a division of power chastens, and that its ac- 
cumulation excites our evil moral qualities. 

Having attempted to shew that this accumulation of ex- 
ecutive power ought to be diminished, by a division of the 
military article, it will further be contended, that the publiek 
good dispenses with the president's judicial power. 

It has been a favourite maxim with the Americans, that 
legislative, executive and judicial power should be lodged in 
seperate hands. And though it must be confessed, that no 
very visible lines have been drawn between these powers, 
yet the maxim is evidence of national attachment to the 
principle of division. 

This maxim is violated, under any construction, by bes- 
towing on executive power the appointment of judicial pow- 
er; precisely as it would have been, had judicial power ap- 
pointed executive. Had judicial power appointed presidents 
for life, would the duration of the office, and its inde- 
pendence of the government and sovereignty, have secured 
executive integrity ? Or would it have been secured by an 
additional power in the judiciary to bestow more lucrative 
offices dependent on its will, upon presidents ? The execu- 
tive power appoints judges, and hj two precedents it is de- 
clared, that it may bestow other lucrative offices upon 
them. The subject is farther illustrated, by supposing ex- 
ecutive power invested with a similar right of appointing 
legislative. 

Many truths are interspersed among Mr. Adams's re- 
marks, from which we draw conclusions very different from 
bis, For instance, he observes that " these principles may 



182 THE EVIL MOBA! PRINCIPLES OF THE 

*< say, with as much arrogance and as much truth, as it wa£ 
" ever said by Charles or James, ' as long as we have 
« the power of making what judges and bishops we please* 
« we are sure to have no law nor gospel but what shall 
*'< please us.'"* Again, " our author forgets, that he who 
f* makes bishops and judges, may have what gospel and law 
n he pleases ; and he who makes admirals and generals, 
• s may command their fleets and armies."f 

The president makes judges and generals. This power 
awakened and put in motion the evil qualities of Charles 
and James ; the effects of the cause in these cases, and in- 
deed in a thousand others, prove that the cause will produce 
evil effects. 

So certain and inevitable was this, that Mr. Adams 
states it as not requiring proof. He considers it as sufficient 
barely to bring to our recollection, that he who appoints 
judges, has what law he pleases ; and that he who appoints 
commanders, determines the conduct of fleets and armies. 

Is this compatible with our maxim in relation to legisla- 
tive, executive and judicial power ? is it compatible with 
the system of a division of power ? in short, is it compatible 
with the principle of self government ? Such an accumu- 
lation of power, is as strictly the attribute of monarchy, as 
it is obviously the bane of self government. Weak and vi- 
cious presidents will play the small arms of judicial and 
military power upon individuals and factions ; but an enter- 
prising and ambitious president, will play the artillery of 
both upon the nation. 

" He who appoints the judges may have what law he 
<< pleases." Wherefore then elect a legislature ? The 
right of suffrage and the efficacy of election, are destroyed or 
hazarded by an executive power to make law through judg- 
es. Innumerable instances might be collected, to prove that 
judicial power is an instrument with which law r can be 
male; in England, the judges made a law for docking 

* Adams's Def. v. 3, 558; f Adams's Def. v. 3, 3&3. 



GOVERNMENT O? THE U. STATES. 183 

estates tail, under the influence of the crown, in order to weak- 
en the power of the very order, designed to balance the 
power of the crown ; in America, it has been said that the 
judges have made a whole code of laws, by declaring the 
common law of England in force? and also constitution, by 
declaring the sedition law constitutional. 

It is inconceivable, that an appointment of a legislature 
during good behaviour by executive power, will produce bad 
laws, and that such an appointment of a judiciary will pro- 
duce good ; that the same means will both purify and cor- 
rupt the same beings. So flat a contradiction justly ex- 
cites a suspicion, that its origin is to be formed in habit or 
errour, and not in principle or reason. 

The influence of executive power over legislative, was 
considered as an evil, because it violated the English theory, 
and had excited the animadversions of many able writers ; 
but the influence of executive over judicial power, was over- 
looked as an evil, because it was a principle of the English 
theory, and had failed to attract the animadversions of po- 
litical writers, under its present form. Had the people 
elected the judiciary in England, and the crown appointed 
the legislature, we should have contended for the frequent 
election and responsibility of judicial, and the independence 
of legislative power. It would have been said, that the 
tenure of good behaviour was essentially necessary to pro- 
duce pure laws ; and that as the judicial power was to give 
what construction and effect to the laws and constitution it 
pleased, it was more necessary to make it elective and res- 
ponsible than legislative power, which could neither con- 
strue nor enforce them. 

The habit, opinion or prejudice, which obtained for ex- 
ecutive power the patronage of judicial, in the constitution 
©f the United States, appears however to have been rather 
forensick than national ; and our executive seems to have 
been enriched with it, rather in consequence of the publiek 
decision upon the constitution, in one mass, than from an 
approbation of this particular detail. 



m« THE EVIL MGBAL PRINCIPLED OF THE 

Nine states continue to appoint their judges by the le- 
gislature | the rest, Mew York excepted, remove them by 
the will of two thirds of the legislature ; and New York 
appoints them by a council annually chosen by the legisla- 
ture. Not a single state has copied the general constitution 
in moulding judicial power, and every state has laboured to 
place it beyond the influence of executive power. 

In forming state constitutions, publiek opinion decided 
upon each detail seperately ; in adopting the general con- 
stitution, it was compelled to decide upon a mass of various 
details. To this cause it is owing, that violations of several 
essential principles adhered to by all the state constitutions, 
have been suffered, rather than adopted in the federal con- 
stitution. Every such contrariety is an irrefragable argu- 
ment to prove, that one end of the oppugnancy ought to be 
suppressed hy a constitutional amendment. 

A degree of military power is conferred upon a presi- 
dent, which, when augmented and ripened by pretext, con- 
juncture or audacity, has alone sufficed, in every instance, to 
destroy national self government. To this instrument of 
-destruction is subjoined a mass of civil power. The last 
refuge of self government is the legislature; in the purity 
of which resides its solitary hope of existence. 

The executive power possesses the prerogative of eon- 
fering lucrative offices upon members of congress ; the sena- 
tors not excepted, though relied on as a check upon execu- 
tive power. In England, this prerogative has utterly dis- 
qualified the House of Commons, as the organ or guardian 
of the principle of self government, for the democratieal 
order. It will operate in America as it has done in Eng- 
land. Is a legislature, courting the patronage of a man 
who commands an army, a pledge or residence for the prin- 
ciple of self government ? Is this secured by enabling a 
man who commands an army, to corrupt the legislature by 
perpetual and brilliant hopes? Was Swift inspired ia'des- 
eribing the difference between the corruption of hope and of 
prompt payment ?— 



GOVERNMENT OF THE U. STATES. 185 

« Sid's rod was slender, white and tall, 
Which oft he used to fish withal ; 
A Plaice was fastened to the hook, 
And many score of Gudgeons took; 
Yet still so happy was his fate, 
He caught his Jish and saved his bait.' 1 

Is not a president, thus enabled to influence the legislature, 
exactly a Lord Bute hidden behind the throne ? 

Mr. Adams converts the American maxim, " that legis- 
6S lative, executive and judicial power should be seperate 
" and distinct," into the idea " of independent orders of 
men and cf powers." And his theory, though destructive 
of national self government, acknowledges the fatal conse- 
quences to be expected, if one order or one power, should 
become dependent on another. Will our policy admit of an 
influence, which will corrupt his ? 

His theory is contrived to preserve certain factitious 
rights of these orders ; this is only to be effected by their 
independence of each other; because, if two should be influ- 
enced by the power or patronage cf one, that one will in- 
vade, abolish or modify these factitious rights. Our policy 
is intended to preserve the natural right of national self 
government; for this purpose we create three chief organs 
of national will; now if we enable either of these, by force 
or fraud, by armies or patronage, to influence the- others, 
the natural right of national self government is lost, with as 
much certainty, as the factitious rights of orders are, by one 
order thus influencing two others, or their representatives. 

The eifort of the general constitution, to say the least, 
is greater to secure the independence of executive, than of 
legislative or judicial power; neither of these can appoint 
a president or enrich him by oiflce. Neither, nor both, can 
select a president of political opinions similar to their own, 
or mould his tenets by patronage into such conformity. Was 
it believed, that numerous bodies would be more likely to 
corrupt one man, than one man would be to corrupt nume- 
rous bodies ? Or was it believed, that a single executive 
vas a safer depositary of self government, than a legislative 

25 



186 THE EVIL MOHAL PRINCIPLES OT THE 

assembly ? That lie should be enabled to influence them> 
and that they should be cautiously prohibited from influenc- 
ing him ? 

In that part of our policy called the state constitutions, 
principles, the reverse of these, prevail. Executive power 
is made dependent on legislative in some way, and vast care 
is taken to keep legislative and judicial power beyond the 
influence of executive. In fact, it was and still is the gene- 
ral opinion, that the independence of legislative and judicial 
power, of the influence of one man, constitutes an indispen- 
sable requisite for the preservation of national self govern- 
ment ; and that an influence of one man over the legisla- 
ture, constitutes a substantial monarchy, and is the harbin- 
ger of its form. If then executive influence over legislative 
and judicial power, is a monarchical principle, the presi- 
dent's appointment of one, and his patronage over both, 
ought to be removed, or we violate the principles by the de- 
tails of our constitution. It is a principle, that the legisla- 
ture should utter the will of the nation ; the detail, exposing 
it to executive influence, may cause it to utter the will of a 
president. The principle and the detail admit of no recon- 
ciliation, and therefore the only question is, which ought to 
be abolished, the influence of the people, or the influence 
of the president over tiie legislature ? 

The elective quality of the presidency, aggravates the 
errour. It procures a confidence which has no foundation, 
because election is no security against great power conferred 
hy it on one man ; and this confidence, by lulling publick sus- 
picion, will mask the progress of executive influence. A 
suspicion, both of its progress and the cause of its progress, 
is suggested by the facts, that in those states where gov 
ernours have no patronage, no state factions have appeared ; 
and that upon the erection of a general executive, having a 
patronage previously unknown, national factions, previously 
unknown also, suddenly started up. 

As civil and military patronage, the command of fleets 
and armies, the direction of a treasury, treaty-making., and 
a nesrativo upon laws, condensed in one Dan. constitute h 



GOVERNMENT 0* THE V. STATES^ ±8* 

power evidently monarchical, it is important betimes to con 
aider how the elective principle, and the monarchical pow 
«r are like to work upon the same person ; the nature of 
one, being to draw him within the pale of responsibility, and 
of the other, to excite him to overleap it. 

We ought not to shut our eyes upon the history of elee 
tive monarchy, but to discern and avoid the cause of its in 
variable catastrophe. Orders have never been able to work 
well with election, nor election with them. If a good gov- 
ernment cannot be made of orders, by the help of election, 
still more discouraging is the experiment of ma-king a good 
government of monarchy, one order only, by its help. This 
project requires one man to constitute or represent two or- 
ders. He must be a monarch in power, but a plebeian in 
temper. No instance occurs in which monarchical power, 
responsible and periodical, has siot struggled for insubordi- 
nation and permanence ; and no remedy for this evil has 
ever appeared ; but the experiment in the case of state gov- 
ernours proves, that the evil may be avoided, by bestowing 
and dividing executive power so judiciously, as that projects 
<o acquire independent and permanent power, may be made 
inconsistent with common sense. Power in certain masses, 
is a moral cause which naturally produces certain effects. 
Kingly power, though conferred by election, constitutes the 
cause, and consequently produces the effects; even exces- 
sively aggravated by the natural indisposition to part 
with it. 

If it is true that aristocratical power, hereditary or nor. 
will suffice to destroy election, responsibility and self gov- 
ernment, can it be false, that monarchical power, hcrcditary 
or not, will suffice for the same end ? No instance occurs 
in which either aristocratical or monarchical powers have 
been peaceably and regularly managed by election or na 
tional will, or in whieh they have not destroyed the princi 
pie of self government. Names constitute nothing. Mo 
narchical powers constitute monarchy, and though monar 
^hy is elective, it is still monarchy. If monarchy an; 1 



188 THE EVIL MORA! PRINCIPLES OF THE 

aristocracy are moral principles productive of evil effects, 
election cannot change their nature, and force them to pro- 
duce good effects. As we have a multitude of elective pub- 
lick officers, without aristocratical powers, we may also have 
an elective chief officer, without monarchical powers. But 
if by law, avarice and guile, the aristocracy of paper and 
patronage is created ; and if the mass of monarchical pow- 
ers, held by the president, remains undivided ; this real aris- 
tocracy will have a real monarch at their head, who upon 
the first conjuncture, which enables him to raise an army, 
will step upon a throne. A system of paper and patronage, 
and our executive powers, bear an astonishing resemblance 
to sundry principles of the operating English policy. The 
detachments of barbarians voluntarily introduced into the 
Roman empire, was the cause of its destruction. 

Mr. Adams abounds in citations to prove, tuat election 
is not a sufficient security against great power. We accord 
with him, and deduce from this acknowledged fact the fore- 
going observations. His remedy is to make monarchical 
and aristocratical powers hereditary; ours, to divide them, 
until they are brought within the coercion of the elective 
principle fairly exercised, which is the exact test, of their 
ceasing to be monarchical or aristocratical. He deduce) 
his remedy from the experience of dark ages, in which he 
says it was never tried ; we deduce ours from the experi- 
ence of the present enlightened age, in which it is tried be- 
fore our eyes. Governours are completely manageable by 
the elective system, because they do not possess monarchi- 
cal powers. From the same cause, state legislatures elect 
them without disorder or difficulty. At some future day, 
on an election of a president, it will be found that the hopes 
and fears inspired by monarchical powers, will light up the 
brand of civil discord, and visit us with an experimental 
knowledge of the effects of these powers* first as elective, 
and then as hereditary. 

The question is, whether the experience of all ages, that 
great power cannot be controlled by election, shall induce 



GOVERNMENT OJf THE U. STATES. 180 

the Americans to accumulate power ; or whether our own 
existing experience, that divided power may be controlled by 
election, shall induce us to divide the mass collected in the 
national executive. 

Tiie evidence on both sides yields exactly the same con- 
elusion. All ancient experiments, to control undivided or 
great masses of power by national will, failed ; our modern 
experiments, to control power in a state of considerable di~ 
vision, have succeeded ; the first demonstrated the evil, the 
second demonstrates the remedy. 

This conclusion cannot be weakened by urging the effi- 
cacy of the elective system hitherto, to manage the executive 
power of the United States, if its early inclination towards 
monarchy existed. The nation testified to the fact. Will 
they not believe themselves, until it is too late ? A blow 
cannot be avoided, which is not foreseen. On the very first 
presidential election, which crossed the progress and pro- 
jects of monarchy, patronage and paper, a disloyalty to elec- 
tion or national will, was distinctly seen. A disloyalty, dis- 
closed by a power in its infancy, will be carried into effect, 
when that power is matured by war, fleets, armies, stock 
and patronage. Perhaps the corruption of another indi- 
vidual at the juncture alluded to, would have demonstrated 
the argument. 

Abbreviation of the time of service, and rotation in office, 
are auxiliaries in unmonarchising executive power, called 
forth by the state constitutions, and abandoned or relaxed by 
the general constitution. Our policy will not be made to 
flourish by inconsistent principles. Its two parts can only 
act with effect by acting in concert. The temptation to 
form factions and perpetrate usurpation, is graduated by the 
chance of reaping the contemplated fruit. A longtime of 
service, connected with rotation, is an inducement to obtain 
influence by corruption, in order to destroy rotation ; and a 
short time without rotation, is an inducement to use the 
same means to secure a re-election. Rotation, and the an- 
nual power of the Roman consuls, united, prevented consu- 



190 THE EVIL MORAL PRINCIPLES 01? THE 

lap usurpation for centuries ; annual appointment of pra- 
consuls, without a strict rotation, produced proconsular 
usurpation in a few years. 

All mankind do in fact believe, that a short duration of 
delegated power, is the best security for its continuing a 
delegation. In every delegation made by an individual for 
himself, he adheres elosely to this opinion. And though 
universal experience concurs with universal opinion, both 
are violated by nations. It is because governments are al- 
ways formed by those who expect delegations. 

Not so will one of these politicians act, should the lot of 
ompire fall on himself. He would frequently change his 
generals and governours. The more powerful the office, 
and the more meritorious the officer, the more uniformly 
would the security of a short term and rotation be resorted 
to. What nation is enslaved by a fool ? Oh people ! do not 
be deluded to pay away your liberty for talents and merit. 
By rewarding them with great power, or great wealth, or 
long duration in office, you will lose the power of rewarding 
them at all; and these rewards, by destroying your liberty, 
will destroy publiek merit and talents, and put an end to the 
objects of your bounty. It is only by withholding rewards., 
destructive both of the power and the objects of reward, 
that nations will be able to evince their gratitude to bene- 
factors. A tyrant would only have kept Csesar proconsul 
in Gaul for one year, and would have thus secured his ty- 
ranny ; the people continued him for seven, and by that 
means lost their liberty. Their bounty to one man, closed 
its stream for ever, and annihilated the race of heroes. 

Equally unanimous are men of all principles, whenever 
the delegation relates to their own exclusive interest, that 
it is dangerous to delegate so much power, as to place them 
;it the mercy of the delegate. Here too every despot dis- 
closes his subtlety, and his conviction of the necessity of 
division to defend his despotism. He carefully divides his 
provinces, his armies, and his powers, so that no one divi- 
*V»d should be strong enough to dethrone him. If he is so 



GOVERNMENT ©J? THE V. STATES. 191 

imprudent as to place his army and his treasury under one 
man ; and irrevocably to invest him with the command of 
them for four years, with a power of appointing and remov- 
ing all officers civil and military, he is dethroned by his 
first able, artful and ambitious general. He places his 
sovereignty in the situation of an unarmed sovereignty of 
the people, and his general in that of the president. 

All despots, monarchical and aristocratical, uniformly 
and strictly practice the principles of division and rotation, 
as the best means to defend their monarchy and aristocracy : 
and as uniformly assure the people, that these same princi 
pies are the worst means to secure liberty or self govern- 
ment. It is simply because they are friends to their owe 
sovereignty, and enemies to the sovereignty of the people* 
As countries are divided into provinces to secure kings, 
power ought to be divided into provinces to secure nations ; 
and as each geographical division is subject to the monarch, 
each potential division should be subject to the people ; 
great provinces in both cases produce the same consequence. 
Even rival orders never fail to use innumerable arts to di- 
vide each other's power. At one period in England, the 
other two orders united to weaken the aristocracy, by 
enabling it to break entails ; at another, the nobility and 
commons united to weaken the power of the crown, by de- 
priving it of the prerogative of removing judges at will, and 
fixing that right in all three ; at a third, the crown and no- 
bility contrived to weaken the power of the people, by join- 
ing with the commons to extend their time of service. 

Power changes moral character, and private life re- 
generates it. The children of hereditary power are not ty- 
rants from a procreative cause. They are made such by 
the contemplation of the power to which they are destined. 
If the prospect corrupts, will the possession cleanse I It 
is not in a natural, but a moral birth, that the defect of the 
hereditary principle lies. Great power, or a long possession 
of power, changes a man's moral nature, whether it is de 
"ivpjj from inheritance or election. Patriots, a^ well >»* 



19% THE EVIL MORAL PRINCIPLES OF THE 

princes, become tyrants from being steeped in the same 
menstruum, and yet nations are still to learn, that its intox- 
icating qualities are tbe same upon both. They consider 
its effect as natural in one case, and monstrous in the other ; 
as if both princes and patriots were not men. Revolution 
fails, because its usual remedy is only to draw tbe men- 
struum from election instead of inheritance, into w hicli to 
plunge the moral qualities of human nature. Even a hope 
of office corrupts eloquence. It ceases to be the animated 
auxiliary of truth, and becomes the mercenary ally of inte- 
rest. Honesty is exchanged for art. An artificial charac- 
ter is formed by a possibility of continuing considerable 
power. It assumes different principles with different per- 
sons. It gilds its baits with patronage, contract and char- 
ter, at the publick expense. And the varnish it assumes is 
to conceal the foulness of the stuff it hides. Whereas a 
portion of power, insufficient to arm treachery, and limited 
to an unalterable period, being chastened of the excitements 
to fraud and force, leaves the mind open to virtue, and the 
certainty of returning to a private station, settles its bias. 

From the foundation of Rome to the accession of Augus- 
tus, was above seven centuries ; and from thence to the ter- 
mination of its empire, less than five. The first was a term 
of growth, the second of decline. The first of progressive 
prosperity ; the second of oscillations depending upon the 
change of character. The first was a term of rotation, the 
second of permanent or hereditary power. The corruption 
or errour of electing the same man a second time to the con- 
sular office, was a symptom and became an instrument of 
the destruction of the republick, except for which, we can on- 
ly compute the probability of its duration, by an inference 
from the long term of its existence under the auspices of the 
annual rotation of executive magistrates, and a division of 
power. 

The same period demonstrates the errour of the objection, 
that rotation causes a loss of talents to the publick. It 
would have been most likely to produce this loss in military 



GOVERNMENT OF THE U. STATES, IS I 

affairs. For seven centuries Rome applied the principle of 
rotation to her generals, and conquered ; for ^\e 9 she trust- 
ed to experience, and was subdued. The rotary generals 
and statesmen of the little Athenian republick, destined it 
to live for ever in the annals of fame, and most of its con- 
temporary governments are for ever dead. As to civil af- 
fairs, the claim of experience would probably be answered 
bj the old adage, but the burst of talents in both cases 
which blazes forth whenever the monopoly of experience is 
destroyed by rotation, is accounted for by the fall of the mo- 
nopoly. The trade being laid open, the wares increase, 
and are made better by competition. Talents,, civil and 
military, are created by the prospect of employment, and 
smothered by the monopoly of experience. 

A strong and independent executive power, has only 
been contended for by Mr. Adams and political writers, as 
a counterpoising weight in the system of balancing orders. 
There being no orders in the system of the United States, 
the only reason for a strong executive, does not exist ; and 
a conformity in that department to the theory of a sove- 
reignty of orders, unquestionably proved by Mr. Adams, 
unquestionably also discloses its nonconformity, to the the- 
ory of a sovereignty of the people. A strong executive is 
the more dangerous, where there is no political order to 
balance it. By creating an executive with monarchical 
powers, without the check of an aristocratical order, this 
monarchical order, is either enabled to assail the liberties 
of the nation, or the nation are driven to erect an aristocrat- 
ical order to balance it. The proof of this remark exists, 
in the case with which an elective executive in France, 
with monarchical powers, unchecked by an aristocratical 
order, has made itself despotick. And Mr. Adams both 
strenuously urges the necessity of an aristocratical order to 
balance monarchical powers, and plainly intimates that we 
shall be speedily compelled, iirst to extend the term of dele- 
gation, and then to adopt the hereditary principle. It is 
!:ted, that the existence of one order, furnishes a reason 
26 



19* THE EVIL MORAL PRINCIPLES OP THE 

for another. Monarchical powers can only he assuaged by* 
an aristoeratical order. Were the former given to the 
president, to create a cause for the latter ? The alterna- 
tive for the United States is ohvious ; it is, either to pare 
away executive power, below monarchy, to a standard not 
requiring an aristoeratical order to check it, or to adopt 
Mr. Adams's system of orders. Monarchical executive 
powers being monarchy in substance, will beget aristocracy, 
just as a system of paper and patronage, being aristocracy 
in substance, will beget monarchy. According to Mr. 
Adams's system, monarchy ought to produce aristocracy, 
and aristocracy monarchy. The presidency, gilded with 
kingly powers, has been tossed into the constitution, against 
the publick sentiment, and gravely bound in didactick fet- 
ters, like those which in England and France have become 
political old junk. Between these, and our principle of 
self government, there can neither be friendship nor com- 
promise. Either our kingly powers, or the sovereignty of 
the people, are by the laws of nature destined to perish in 
their warfare. The first will be suppressed by amendments 
to the constitution, or the last, lulled by the narcotick, cor- 
ruption, will be murdered in its sleep. 

The people and the legislative bodies of the United 
States shrink from this honest confession, whilst they are 
making it in their actions. They will not see the monarchy 
they court, and expect safety whilst feeding an enemy, from 
denying his existence ; whilst even the European habit, of 
referring every thing to executive power, prevails. Epochs 
and measures are ascribed to presidents. Legislative pow- 
er solicits a state of degradation, by descending to the indig- 
nity of pleading a subserviency to them, as a passport to 
popular favour, and condescending to become the satellite 
of one man. State legislatures, parties and individuals, 
enlist under candidates for the presidency, as they do in 
England under candidates for Uiq ministry $ and the nation 
itself, forgetting their representatives, contemplates the 
dazzling executive power of their own creation. The 



GOVERNMENT OF THE U. STATES. 1»£ 

phenomena attending it is the same here as in England, and 
this coincidence demonstrates an identity in the causes ; but 
We fall into the errour, of contemplating the same thing as a 
mighty substance and an empty shadow, without reflecting 
that the danger lies, not in the feeble body of an ignorant 
man, but in an accumulation and concentration of active 
powers. For a century past, executive power in England^ 
has had the address to change its ministers as they became 
odious, and to replace them by popular adversaries ; retain- 
ing the encroachments upon the rights and purses of the 
people, which produced the odium, and using the populari- 
ty of its new ministers, to make new encroachments: who, 
having lost it in performing this work, make room for 
others. Thus executive power, working with popular agents, 
and armed with gold and iron, has long gained ground with 
undeviating regularity in England. It pursues the same 
system here. Our presidents are its ministers, suffered only 
to remain in office whilst popular 5 encroaching in favour 
of executive power whilst this popularity lasts ,• bearing the 
odium of mischiefs which ought to light upon our aecumu* 
lation and concentration of powers; leaving encroachments 
behind them for the benefit of executive power, to be ex- 
tended by popular successors ; and organizing a body of 
^outs and ins, alternately demagogues and tools. These 
outs and ins are equally proper to delude a nation, and to 
exalt executive power, which sits in proud superiority, 
looking down upon the fraud and oppressions caused by 
itself ; whilst the people dare not look up to it as their 
cause, but will be taught the forlorn hope of redress from a 
change of ministry, as in England. Hence, both in England 
and America, executive poAver obscures legislative to such a 
degree, that even popular favour is only obtained by an 
avowal of subserviency or hostility to its prime minister ; 
and we compel our popular representatives gratuitously to 
become the tools of the same principle, to which the mem- 
bers of the British House of Commons sell their services. 



196 THE EVIi MORA! PRINCIPLES OE THE 

A nation which requires its representatives to become 
the avowed advocates or accusers of the prime minister of 
religious or civil power, whether he is called a pope or a 
president, has an equal prospect for civil and religious liber- 
ty. Civil and religious preachers and reformers, mar- 
shalled into opposite parties, in all times and countries, are 
the same sorts of patriots. Representation, limited to the 
alternative of enlisting under one of these parties, ceases to 
be an instrument of national self government, and dwindles 
into an instrument of oppression for the prime minister or 
his antagonist. We see and despise the old whig and tory 
farce, or the new farce of ins and outs in England ; we hold 
in detestation the corruption which enlists the representa- 
tives of a rich and wise nation under the minister of execu- 
tive power, or his expected successor ; we deplore the con- 
tempt for publick characters, the apathy towards publick in- 
terest, and the surrender of the mind to selfishness, which this 
foolish imposition generates ; and yet we insist that our 
representatives shall sacrifice their honesty and indepen- 
dence at the same shrine, and make themselves knaves in 
order to make us dupes. 

The struggle for our presidency, like the struggle for 
the English administration, is the concurrent verdict of the 
contending parties, that executive power has already obtain- 
ed the ascendency. When it depended on a Dionysius or a 
Timoleon, whether monarchy or republicanism should reign 
at Syracuse, monarchy was established. It is a government 
according to the will of one man, not the mode in which 
that will operates. If it operates by means of a patronage 
able to influence popular representatives, or by a national 
humour compelling its representatives to enlist themselves 
for or against one man's will, it is as much monarchy as if 
it operated in a different mode. No writer describes a re- 
publiek, guided by the will of one of its officers, and depend- 
ing on the chance of that officer's possessing republican or 
monarchical principles. 



GOVERNMENT 0* THE V. STATES. l^T 

We see that an administration majority f will attend suc- 
cessive presidents, as it attends successive premiers in 
England. Whether it is called whig or tory, federal or re- 
publican, high church or low church, causes no difference 
in the operation of the fact. The discovery we are in pur- 
suit of, is the cause of this fact. Wherefore is it, that in 
both countries, factions or parties are seen, having execu- 
tive power for its object, and none paying court to or conde- 
scending to be the blind partisans either of legislative or ju- 
dicial power ? It is because one man in both represents the 
intire undivided mass of executive power, and many men 
represent legislative and judicial. The two latter powers, 
being considerably divided, cannot feed mercenary faction s| 
and the former is able to feed them, out of the abundant 
granary of its monopoly. The same remedy which prevents 
legislative or judicial power from begetting factions able to 
make either despotick, will have the same effect on execu- 
tive. The ability of state governours to create executive 
factions, is graduated in the United States, by the portions of 
power which they represent. If a single individual repre- 
sented the intire mass either of legislative or judicial power 
in the United States, it would become a power capable of 
creating factions and undermining the rights of the people. 
Suppose that one man possessed the legislative power, and 
that what we call executive power was divided by represen- 
tation, equally with legislative at present ; would not 
usurpation invariably proceed from legislative, as it now 
does from executive power ? If a division of legislative 
power, prevents it from becoming an usurper and a tyrant, 
will not division have the same effect on executive ? Repub- 
licanism, like a mercantile company, perishes, whenever 
one man by any means whatever has obtained the direction 
of the common interest. It is not her motto that " safety 
lies in the counsel of one man." 

The people of the United States and of Great Britain, 
have been frequently censured for a corrupt or absurd exer- 
cise of the right of suffrage ; and their want of virtue or 



\ 

198 THE EVIL MORAL PRINCIPLES OF f HE 

understanding in the discharge of this function, has been 
forcibly urged against the right itself. An accumulation 
of power in the hands of one man, bears a strong similitude 
to its accumulation in a single chamber. The latter, says 
Mr. Adams, will diffuse vice and folly throughout a nation* 
and corrupt election. Will the same cause purify it ? It 
is true that the ruin of election proceeds from this cause, 
and not from an innate disposition in the people to do them- 
selves an injury. An accumulation of power artd patronage 
in tlie hands of one man, causes candidates for popular fa» 
vour to corrupt the people, in order to bring themselves 
within the notice of this dispenser of wealth ; and candi- 
dates for executive favour to infuse into them the fatal idea, 
that they ought to demand of their representatives an ac- 
cordance with executive will. If such effects do flow from 
this cause, the people are unjustly accused of a deficiency 
either in virtue or understanding; and the just conclusion 
onl\ is, that they are not able to control the moral law of 
Jiature, which has irrevocably pronounced, that evil moral 
effects will flow from evil moral causes. Had we emigrat- 
ed from Turkey, we might have been wedded to the opi- 
nions, that legislative power could be safely represented by 
one man, because it possessed but few of the means of usur- 
pation ; but that executive power ought to be very much di- 
vided, because it possessed many of those means. And if 
ambition is more likely to be excited by a considerable than 
by a slender capacity to gratify itself, the idea, though 
brought from Turkey, would not have been so unfavorable 
to civil liberty, as its converse, which has constituted execu- 
tive power, the general or universal usurper of the rights of 
mankind.* 

Lord Bolingbroke observes, in his Patriot King, that the 
management of parliament by undertakers, was one of the 
most pernicious violations of the whig portion of the Eng- 
lish form of government. It converts representation into 

* The president of the United States is considered as an elective monarch 
in GocV-Po. Jus. v. 2, 77. 



8&YERKMENT Of THE XT. STATES. iQV 

vassalage to the leaders of parties, disciplined, not by the 
comparatively honourable infliction of the lash, but by the 
base and wicked sophism, that it is honourable to stick to a 
party, and treacherous to adhere to conscience. The disci- 
ples of this infamous doctrine are forged into tools for am 
bition and tyranny by praises and rewards, whilst honestyis 
discouraged by base epithets, as a foil to the varnish with 
which the decoys are painted, designed to deceive and en- 
slave the multitude. 

The pendulum of power long vacillated in England be- 
tween whig and tory undertakers, and a gallant nation is 
the victim of an evil principle. Walpole, a whig undertak- 
er, erected the tory stock system, and wafted power on the 
pinions of law, from fruitful land to the voracious paper 
kite. And to this hideous principle of gaining honour and 
profit by slavery to leaders or undertakers in parliament, it 
is owing, that the fluctuations of parties have produced 
more harm than good to the English nation. 

The principle is derived from executive power, which 
infuses and rewards the base subserviency, founded in 
nourishing hopes capable of being gratified, either by the 
possessor of that power, or by some leader of an opposition, 
when he shall attain it. And the rewards are paid at the 
publick expense for betraying the publick good. 

A reformation of the executive power of the general 
government, sufficient to prevent the custom of managing 
congress by undertakers from creeping into our policy, 
would probably contribute more to the safety, prosperity 
and happiness of the United States, than any other amend- 
ment of the constitution, a reformation excepted, capable of 
producing a real militia. Only two modes of effecting it 
suggest themselves ; one to reduce the patronage of a presi- 
dent beneath a capacity for creating these undertakers ; the 
other, to shorten the time of his service, and make him for 
ever ineligible to the same office, to diminish his motives for- 
doing it. This latter mode would rapidly provide an excel- 
lent fund for members of congress in a body of ex-presr 



MO THE EVIX MORAL PRINCIPLES 03? THE 

de:nts, under no temptation to beeome undertakers them- 
selves, able from their experience to detect other undertak- 
ers, and shedding upon congress the knowledge, integrity 
and independence, derived from its consular members by 
the Roman Senate, which, whilst the rotation of the consular 
office lasted, was able to render even an aristocracy illus- 
trious. 

Executive secrecy is one of the monarchical customs, 
plausibly defended, and certainly fatal to republican gov- 
ernment, either in an aristoeratical or democratieal form. 
Had the senate of Rome suffered their consuls to hide the 
foreign negociations under secrecy, or legislated upon the 
credit of their recommendation, without thorough informa- 
tion, even aristocratical wisdom would sooner have fallen 
under executive prowess. The essential principle of our 
policy being the division of pow r er, whatever shall convert 
one primary division of power into an instrument of another, 
unites and consolidates the means of usurpation in exact vi- 
olation of it, and substitutes the evil moral principle of an 
accumulation of power, for its division. The president, 
who shall be able to bring congress into the practice of 
legislating upon a confidence in his recommendations, with- 
out a thorough knowledge of the subject, will extend the 
custom of managing congress by undertakers, exercise by 
their aid the legislative power, and gradually provide the 
most ample funds for rewarding their services ,• a British 
end, to which executive secrecy inevitably leads. How can 
national self government exist without a knowledge of na- 
tional aifairs ? or how can legislatures be wise or indepen- 
dent, who legislate in the dark upon the recommendation of 
one man ? 

Executive secrecy furnishes double means for corrupt- 
ing, nor are the offerings to vanity less greedily accepted, 
than those to avarice. Intoxicated by the incense of the 
one, men are prepared for the seduction of the other ; nor 
will they hesitate to extend executive patronage at the na- 
tional expense, when they consider the wisdom and discrimi- 



GOVERNMENT OF THE U. STATES. 201 

nation in the disposition of secrets, as a pledge for the same 
degree of wisdom in the disposition of money. 

It is in vain to expect civil liberty from the principle 
which has universally destroyed religious. Benefices are 
the cause of political as well as of religious factions and par- 
ties, and if one man distributes them, he becomes a pope or a 
monarch. These plunge hereticks into flames, and patri- 
ots into prisons ; these beget the persecutions of sectarism 
and the intolerance of faction ; and both the holders and 
seekers of these universally resort to reason or sophistry, 
to truth or falsehood, not to advance the publick good, bat 
for selfish ends and private emolument. If a handful of 
guineas thrown among a mob, or a mountain of dollars ex- 
posed to be scrambled for by a nation, would produce good 
order and secure a respect for the rights of others, then 
happiness and liberty may be reasonably expected from a 
mountain of executive patronage. Divide this mountain, 
and it becomes a wholesome circulating medium, doing good 
like a divided priesthood ; undivided, like an accumulation 
of the whole national coin by one man, it falls upon and 
crushes popular rights. 

I have not entered into a discrimination between execu- 
tive and legislative powers, because I know of none such, 
nor any reason why war, peace, appointments to office, or 
the dispensation of publick money, should have been counted 
in the catalogue of the former, except the efficacy of these 
powers in one man, for begetting tyranny; or except an 
imitation of the English government derived from former 
habitual opinions. In Europe we find executive power, at 
all places and periods, legislating by proclamations ; in the 
government of the United States the European allotment is 
frequently departed from, and in many of the states entire- 
ly disregarded. The remark is made merely to suggest to 
the reader, that it is not an clement like water, naturally 
returning by fluidity or evaporation to a homogeneous mass, 
but capable of being divided and assigned in such managea- 
ble allotment vas society may determine to be best for its 

27 



ritiZ THE EVIL MORAL PRINCIPLES OF THE 

liberty and happiness. Filmer* s divine origin of kings, Mr, 
Adams's natural origin of noble orders, and the doctrine of 
judicial independency (on God and conscience excepted) are 
equally pious, equally wise, equally in concord with the 
qualities of human nature, and equally calculated to secure 
human liberty. Each goes as far as possible towards mak- 
ing Gods of men. 

A period existed in the progress of the English govern- 
ment, during which an effort was made to diminish the pow- 
er of the king. Judicial power was in the list of feudal 
usurpations. The king, having the right of judging, exer- 
cised it by a deputy, dependent on his will. But the other 
orders stript the king of this branch of feudal power, and 
succeeded in transferring (he dependence of the judges from 
one order to three. 

The term " independence," as applied to judges in Eng- 
land, cannot refer to the sovereign power, because they are 
dependent on the will of the parliament. The doctrine it 
inculcates, therefore, does not extend beyond the idea of 
their independence of any power inferior to the sovereignty. 
The sovereignty in the scheme of balanced orders, as in 
England, does not rest in one order, but in three ; the judg- 
es were considered as dependent, whilst they were exclu- 
sively subjected to the will of one order, the king; and as 
independent, when subjected to the will of the parliament, 
the sovereignty itself; because an exclusive subjection to 
the will of the sovereign, is the highest state of indepen 
dence, of which a subject or agent is capable. In an equiv- 
alent sense the terra is used by our policy. The legislature 
and executive shall he independent, not of the sovereignty, 
hut of any other agent of the sovereign's. 

To effect the English judicial independence, the judges, 
though named by the king, are removable at the pleasure 
of the parliament ; and our imitation of this policy, destroy* 
the subordination of judicial power to the sovereignty, and 
bestows a considerable influence over it on an pgent or sub- 
ject of the sovereignty. The. president creates judges, and 



GOVERNMENT OF THE IT. STATES. 203 

may corrupt them by additional office* ; and the sovereign- 
ty cannot displace them. 

Several political caricatures arise out of these facts, 
Responsibility is an essential principle of representative 
government ; the English monarchy enforces it on judicial 
power, and the representative policy of the United States 
dispenses with it. 

Division of power is a republican, and not a monarch! 
oal principle. The English policy divides and diminishes 
the power of the king to appoint judges, by investing the 
parliament with a right to remove them ; our constitution. 
magnifies the power of appointment, by withholding any 
correspondent mode of removal. 

Self govern meat, by responsible representation, is the 
essence of oar policy; the sovereignty of orders in Eng- 
land, preserves its self government, by the responsibility of 
its judicial organ; our national sovereignty renounces self 
government by renouncing a similar responsibility. It re- 
nounces sovereignty itself, which cannot exist in association 
with a superior or an equal. Ancient hierarchy and aris 
tocracy, never claimed the privilege of independence of the 
sovereignty, except under the sanction of a commerce with 
Heaven, and a descent from the Gods. Are the integrity 
and wisdom of judges also of divine right, and entitled to 
exaltation above nations ? Or, are they subject to frailty, 
and liable to prejudice and errour ? Political offences have, 
I believe, been generally decided conformably to the politi- 
cal complexion of the bench. 

The people were supposed to be U\q only source for a! 
tering the constitution, according to our policy ; but it is ex- 
posed to a power of construction, not responsible t'j the 
people. 

Legislative, executive and judicial powers shall be sepa 
rate and distinct; jet the judges can abolish or make law 
by precedent. 

The president has a negative ; it shall however be eon- 
trotted by two thirds of; congress < but the negative off he 



20* THE EVIL MORAL PRINCIPLES OF THE 

president maybe revived by a control of the judges over 
the control of two thirds. 

" All legislative powers" are given to certain function- 
aries ; the extent of this power, has suggested the propriety 
of making them responsible; yet the judicial power, in its 
capacity to disallow or repeal the acts of the legislature, is 
made a greater legislative power : has the extent of this 
power also suggested the propriety of making judges irres- 
ponsible ? 

« Congress may from time to time" establish new courts : 
can the old supreme court abolish them, by declaring the 
law to be unconstitutional ? 

Enforcement of law is the judicial province ; every new 
law is an accumulation of duty ; refinements of the new in- 
vented idea of judicial independence, demand protection co- 
extensively against an accumulation of duty, as against a 
diminution of salary ; it is a principle, therefore, capable of 
putting a sudden stop to legislation, unless new courts are 
regularly created, to encounter the burden of enforcing new 
laws. 

But if judicial power may assail legislative, by disallow- 
ing laws ; legislative power may revenge itself upon judicial, 
by impeachments and convictions ; and the station of ex- 
ecutive power between these combatants, contains an ability 
to keep up the war, until both are worried and discredited, 
so as to thrive upon their ruins. 

Under the English monarchy, this species of responsi- 
bility, impeachment, also exists; but a joint parliamentary 
vote contains another species of responsibility, infinitely 
more valuable ; yet both have been unable in England to 
shield judicial against the influence of executive power, 
arising from its patronage in appointing and promoting 
judges. Here, the same patronage is created, and the 
strongest of these securities against Its effects, abolished. 

Had the responsibility arising from impeachment been 
formed sufficient in England, the tenure of royal pleasure 
would simply have been exchanged for that of good beha- 



GOVERNMENT OE THE V. STATES. 205 

viour,* but its insufficiency, suggested an exchange of a 
complete dependency upon the will of the king, for a com* 
plete dependency upon the will of the sovereignty. 

The reason is obvious. The functionaries in every con- 
siderable branch of government, may innocently injure a na- 
tion. Erroneous opinion is not less injurious because it is 
honest. Impeachment is a remedy for crime : the will of 
the sovereignty, for errour. The English sovereignty has 
a resource both against crime and errour ; the sovereignty 
of the United States is content with a bad remedy against 
crime, and no remedy against errour. 

A defect of talents disclosed by trial ; imbecility of 
mind or body produced by age or malady ; a construction of 
the constitution favourable to a gradual revolution ; might 
each produce great evils : but impeachment could not re- 
move them. If an indefinite adoption of the common law of 
England should contain a magazine of tools, for working 
gradually towards the English policy, impeachment is in- 
sufficient to countermine the work. For although the judg- 
es should deem it criminal in private citizens, to express 
honest apprehensions of a tendency towards monarchy ; yet 
the injustice and impolicy of considering honest judicial 
opinion as criminal, although infected by that tendency,* 
might still be demonstrated. 

Opinion, which makes, disallows or construes law, in 
pronouncing judgements, may be excessively injurious to na- 
tions and individuals, and perfectly innocent; or it may 
conceal criminal designs under an appearance of innocence, 
beyond the possibility of detection and punishment. 

Is a national subjection to opinions, innocent but mis- 
chievous, or criminal but apparently honest, consistent with 
national sovereignty or self government ? If so, self gov- 
ernment must hereafter be defined « a submission to frau- 
dulent or erroneous opinions." A subjection to one of these 
classes, is a subjection to both, because there is no test for 
separating them, 



206 THE EVIL MORAL PRINCIPLES OF THE 

Legislative and executive opinions, neither claim or pos- 
sess this pre-eminent state of insubordination. Though in- 
nocent and honest, though delivered on oath, they are con- 
trolled by national will. But the instant an individual is 
removed from the legislative or executive departments into 
the judicial, his nature is supposed to have been regenerated, 
his errours are sanctified, his intrigues are overlooked, and 
his responsibility commuted for the universal refuge of im- 
posture, " God and his own conscience." 

And jet history abounds with the political intrigues and 
oppressions of judicial power, in favour of revolution, usur- 
pation and tyranny. These display the insufficiency of im- 
peachment for the correction of crimes, to be almost equiv- 
alent to its incompetency for the correction of errour. Ju- 
dicial power is placed beyond the reach of prosecution from 
an individual. It can ally itself with a branch of govern- 
ment. And impeachment is in practice more frequently a 
weapon with which factions assail each other, than the 
avenger of crimes. 

Law is nearer to the sovereign will, than the construc- 
tion of law, and is therefore more likely to correspond with 
it ; but admitting that a power of construing is nearly equiv- 
alent to a power of legislating ; why should construction of 
law be quite independent of sovereign will, when law itself 
is made completely subservient to it ? In England, if judi- 
cial power opposes the will of sovereign power, by its pow- 
er of construing laws, the sovereign power can change its 
organs. In America, judicial power is increased, and its 
responsibility, compared with a monarchical standard, di- 
minished. Our constitutions and sovereignty as well as 
laws, may be moulded or undermined by an immoveable 
power of construction. Here the power of construction is 
a supremacy over the legislature and the sovereign ; in 
England, the power of removing judges by the parliament, 
is a supremacy of the sovereign and the legislature over the 
power of construction. A right to legislate, subject fo an 
insubordinate right to construe and apply* inverts responsi* 



GOVERNMENT OF THE V, STATES, 207 

bility, by creating an allegiance of law to judgement, in place 
of an allegiance of judgement to law. 

But judicial power, being in its nature didactick and 
imbecile, is incapable of constituting a sovereign ; and is 
uniformly induced by a consciousness of this incapacity, to 
ally itself with some other power. The executive, which 
appoints, promotes, and patronises judicial power; which 
wields the sword, and keeps the key of the treasury, is .un- 
exceptionably that ally. The necessity for this alliance is 
demonstrated in the consideration, that legislative power 
must be in collision with judicial, because its territories only 
can be invaded by construction. An alliance is not formed 
with a natural enemy. In alliances, the weak party, sub- 
mits to the strong one ; whatever share of power an insu- 
bordinate judiciary may acquire, will therefore become sub- 
servient to executive designs. 

Judicial power has universally been considered as be- 
longing to municipal, and not to political law. Its func- 
tions relate to individuals, and not to nations. In the prin- 
ciples of governments, it is not assigned a place. Mr. 
Adams compounds his political system of the principles of 
monarchy, aristocracy and democracy ; and perfects, as he 
imagines, his checks and balances, without making the least 
use of judicial power. And that this idea is correct, its 
subordination to law, and its being invariably the instru- 
ment of political power, held by a nation, a government, a 
faction, or an individual, are strong illustrations. In revo- 
lutions it follows, but never leads. 

It is questionable, therefore, whether it was the intention 
of the general, or any state government, to erect judicial 
power into a political department, by inferences to be inge- 
niously drawn from the ideas of its independence, and Che 
dependence of legislatures upon constitutions. The lines 
of a power to mould burs and constitutions without respon- 
sibility, into the endless forms within the reach of construc- 
tion, would have been distinctly expressed, and not left to 
be traced from a single'Word of Ineroglyphical obscurity. 



208 THE EV1JL MGHAL PUlffClPI,ES 01 THE 

But judicial power has seized upon a quality peculiar to 
the American policy, to transform itself into a political .de- 
partment, and to extend its claims far beyond precedent. 
All our governments are limited agencies ; others are uni- 
versally or generally unlimited sovereignties. Legislation, 
under our policy, is subject to constitutional restrictions $ 
according to the policy of other nations, it is the expression 
of the sovereign's will. In one case, legislation, which ex- 
ceeds its agency or violates constitutional limits, is void ; in 
the other, such an excess cannot happen. Being void, no 
publick functionary or private citizen ought to execute it; 
therefore judges, jurymen or officers of any other descrip- 
tion, are bound to determine whether the instrument ex- 
hibited to them as law, be law.* But all these descrip- 
tions of persons are bound by the laws of sovereign govern- 
ments, and have no power, direct or indirect, to determine 
upon the validity of a law. None of them, therefore, can be- 
come a political department. Whereas, if the judges of the 
United States can acquire the exclusive right of declaring a 
law void, without any responsibility or mode of defeating 
the declaration, they must become a political department of 
great importance. An intention of creating judicial power 
into a political department, as a barrier against legislative 
usurpation, is the inference drawn by itself, from its jight 
to refuse to execute unconstitutional laws ; but this right 
belongs to juries, to officers, and to every citizen. It flows 
from the limited nature of our governments, contrived, not 
to increase the power of judges or juries, but to secure the 
sovereignty of the people. This would not be secured, by 
inferring from the limitation of legislative power elected by 
the people, an unlimited judicial power not elected by the 
people. To distrust and limit responsible and removable 
agents, and trust without limit irresponsible and immovea- 
ble, could never have been intended. 

* If this reasoning- is correct, the courts erred in forbidding' juries to con 
sider the constitutionality of the sedition law. It was not a question ai < 
the construction of the law, but whether it was really law or not. 



liOYISith"MEiri< ©IF TMfi ¥• STATES, Mb 

In tire states, judicial power is secured against executive 
influence in several modes. In two only* can a single will 
appoint judges ; in these, they are removable by an address 
of two thirds of the legislature, and the governour is elect- 
ed only for two years immediately by the people : in the 
others, judges are appointed by numerous and popular 
bodies, which can plant republican principles on the bench, 
and invigorate them after they are planted. This fact, both 
demonstrates the publick disapprobation of the judicial sys- 
tem of the general government, and discloses a remedy 
against its becoming an executive implement. 

And this remedy is sufficient, if we exclude the idea of 
converting judicial power into a political department. This 
is only attainable by bestowing publick confidence upon ju- 
dicial power, and publick confidence can never be purchased, 
except by actual responsibility. We here detect the false 
construction of the term " independence." The indepen- 
dence, dignity or power of an agent, is reflected from the 
confidence and power of his principal. By depriving the 
agent of this confidence, you rob him of his independence. 
No sovereign will confide in agents, not responsible to him ; 
and therefore judicial independence of sovereign power, is 
the destruction of genuine judicial independence. 

In England, the independence of judicial power was pro- 
duced, by delivering it from the influence of executive pow- 
er, and exalting it to a dependence upon the will of the 
sovereign ; in the United States, the independence of ju- 
dicial power is destroyed, by delivering it from the will of 
the sovereign, and degrading it nearly to the level from 
whence it was raised in England ; it will therefore become 
the implement of executive power, for want of the confi- 
dence and support, begotten by a dependence on the sove 
reign, as ii was in England on account of the satire defect. 
Thus we are conducted to the only mode of exalting 
judicial power into a political department, which would be 
conformable to Our principle of division. It can only be 
•iifected by bestowing upon it the publick confidence, and 
that can onJy be bestowed by responsibility to the publick. 
i 28 



310 THE EVIL MORAX PRINCIPLES OP TllE 

Disunited from the sovereign power, by the appointment 
and patronage of one of its creatures, it will reap the dis- 
trust and contempt of the nation, who will never transfer 
to judicial power, thus degraded or corrupted, any portion 
of their confidence, from a legislature, elective and respon- 
sible : just as the Lords and Commons of England suspected 
and despised the judges, so long as they were under the in- 
fluence of the king. 

Dependence upon the sovereign power, is the only spe- 
cies of independence, of which judicial power is capable. 
If It is deprived of this species of independence, it invariably 
becomes a dependant or instrument of some other power. 
Deprived, under our policy, of a dependence on the nation, 
judicial power has no other alternative, but to become a 
dependant of legislative or executive power. It is too weak 
to set up for itself. In the states, it has been subjected to 
legislative power ; under die general constitution, to execu- 
tive ; and if ever a president should attempt to acquire mo- 
narchical authority, judicial power must therefore second 
his designs. 

The independence and strength of power, in every sec- 
tion of our policy, is in proportion to their dependence on 
the people. This term, being applied indiscriminately, to 
legislative, executive and judicial power, does not admit of 
a contradictory construction in relation to either, so as to 
have the double effect, of admitting the dependence of two 
departments or two objects of the same word, on the sove- 
reignty, and denying it as to the third. 

Out of the principles of division and responsibility to the 
nation, has arisen the idea of one political agent being in- 
dependent of another. Dependence of one agent on another, 
would be an accumulation, not a division of power, and pow r - 
c" is not made responsible, by its accumulation. Indepen- 
dence of the nation, is at least equally inconsistent with the 
principles of division and responsibility. It is the same 
'•.aft which once defended judicial dependence on a king^ 
which now defends judicial independence of the nation. 



GOVERNMENT OF THE V. STATES. 2tl 

The end of both doctrines is to destroy the best pledges for 
civil liberty, namely, division of power, and responsibility to 
nations* 

Independence of one agent of another, was not invented 
to strengthen, and so render power insubordinate to the 
national will ; but to weaken it, for the exact contrary pur- 
pose. To glide the judicial power, under a misapprehension 
of this single word, into a state of insubordination to publick 
will, into a sovereign power over law and constitution ; and 
into a dependence on executive power, contrary to the poli- 
cy the word has been used to impress, is one of those er- 
rours, overlooked on account of its excessive visibility. 

A sovereignty over the constitution, objectionable as it 
would still be, would be safer in the legislature, than in the 
judiciary, because of its duennial responsibility ; and be- 
cause it would not naturally devolve from the legislature 
upon the president ; but an excessive power in weak hands* 
inevitably becomes vicarious. 

But if judicial power can be erected into a political de- 
partment, capable of restraining deviations from the con- 
stitution by the legislature, it would probably contribute to- 
wards the preservation of our policy. Publick opinion is 
now the only legitimate guardian of obedience to the consti- 
tution ; its sloth and inattention, invites and overlooks 
aberrations from it, amounting to a tendency, which a watch- 
ful political judiciary would detect and control ; whilst pub- 
lick opinion would still retain its sovereignty unimpaired, 
and act as forcibly as at present. And a division of the 
national confidence between the legislature and judiciary, 
would carry a degree farther the principle of dividing pow- 
er ; but this can never happen, so long as one is subordinate, 
and the otber insubordinate to national will. 

There is a manifest distinction between a political and 
municipal department ; and judicial power, to constitute ei- 
ther, must have its attributes. An origin from the sove- 
reignty and independence of any other department, art .it 
tributes of a political department ? but a muiifoipal depai i 



MM THE EVIL MORAX PRINCIPLES OF THE 

merit, is a mere detail of law ; and a strict submission to 
law, its inseparable quality. The attribute of a political 
department is destroyed, by an origin from or an influence 
by another department ; and the quality of a municipal de- 
partment is destroyed by an independence of the legislature 
and sovereignty : a judiciary thus situated, is a non-deseript 
legal or political being. The independence of a political 
department, cannot exist in an executive creature ; nor can a 
genuine and useful enforcement of law, flow from an inde- 
pendence of the sovereign power. 

Let us illustrate the idea by a supposition* The Eng- 
lish sovereignty is lodged in the parliament. The sove- 
reignty and the legislature is the same. Judicial power is 
considered as a mere- municipal detail. It is therefore sub- 
ject to the will of this sovereign legislature, and has no pow- 
er to disallow a law, or change the constitution. Here is 
consistency. But suppose this sovereignty and legislature 
could neither appoint nor remove judges; that they were 
approved and tried by the House of Commons, being nomi- 
nated by their speaker; and that they could repeal or make 
law and constitution by precedents : are not the conse- 
quences apparent ? The English parliamentary sovereign 
would lose the power of self government ; the judges would 
cling to the commons, they would undermine the sovereign- 
ly of orders, and would gradually convert it into a repre- 
sentative democracy. Such is our case. Neither national 
sovereignty, nor legislative power, nor popular represcn • 
tat ion, appoints, has a power over, or influences the judges. 
They are under no responsibility to act according to the 
will of our sovereignty, or of our legislature. They are 
nominated by the president, and approved and tried by the 
senate; and they make or repeal law and constitution by 
precedents. Therefore thay are under the same influence 
to undermine the popular sovereignty, as the supposed judg- 
es would be to undermine a monarchical sovereignty, or a 
sovereignty of orders. Can a judicial independency of the 
American sovereignty* present the introduction of monajv 



GOVEKNMSNT Of THB V. STATES. £1« 

chical principles, because a judicial dependency upon the 
English sovereignty, prevents the introduction of repub- 
lican ? 

Judicial power has never appeared in any political sys* 
tern, completely independent of the sovereign power, ex- 
cept under the constitution of the United States. Some- 
times it is dependent on a monarch, at others, on a govern- 
ment or on the people ; in England, it is controllable with- 
out delay or trial by the sovereign will. In our state gov- 
ernments its tenure is various ; but these varieties unite in 
the common end, of some species of responsibility to the 
sovereign. In Connecticut, judges have been elected hj 
the legislature for very short periods during two centuries, 
and their integrity or responsibility has never produced 
mischief. And a spacious field of comparison has appeared 
between judges appointed by a single will, and those chosen 
by popular bodies. The latter are not thrown into the back 
ground, in point of talents, integrity or republicanism. 

A single will, is more likely to be seduced by dogma or 
ambition, and to overlook virtue in search of engines to ad- 
vance selfish designs, than the people or their representa- 
tives. If this is not true, why do we erect republican gov* 
ernments? if it is true, why is it not applicable to judicial 
appointments ? 

Where is the difference m the application of republican 
principles, between legislative and judicial power? 

If the office and powers of a judge are important, ho are 
those of a legislator. If one may injure the publick, by 
crime, incapacity or errour, so may the other. If time and 
trial may disclose defects in a legislator, so may thvy in a 
judge. If there is a hardship in dismissing one without 
trial ; the same hardship reaches tife other. If the tenure 
of good behaviour, or a right to persevere for Ufa in con- 
scientious errour, would destroy the responsibility of a 
legislator, it will destroy that of a judge. And if legisla- 
tive integrity and virtue are only to be obtained by election 
and responsibility, judicial integrity and virtue can nevr 



2i& THE EVIL MORAL PRINCIPLES OP THE 

expected from an insubordinate power for life. The power 
of construing the constitution and disallowing law, possessed 
by our judiciary, being functions of unexampled judicial 
power, and approaching nearer to sovereign and legislative 
power, than in any former instance; are considerations 
which bestow great weight upon this parallel. 

Judicial responsibility " to God and conscience," is a 
counterpart of the " divine right," cheat, resorted to by in- 
numerable kings, nobles and priests, to delude and oppress 
mankind. Our system renounces this species of responsi- 
bility, and is founded upon the principle of responsibility to 
the nation. Is this political principle to be lost, and the 
hostile principle of superstition substituted for it, by the cob- 
webs of inference and construction ? Responsibility to Gcd 
is the sanction of religion; what would be the influence of 
religious precept, if this sanction was dissolved ? Such as 
will be the influence of political precept unattended with 
responsibility to the sovereign. 

Practice, as well as theory, sheds light upon this sub 
ject. It affords endless materials to prove the usefulness of 
judicial responsibility, and to display the force of habitual 
prejudices ; but we will compress an idea of this fruitful 
argument into the following paragraph. 

In England and America, the permanency of some judg- 
es, and the fluctuation of others ; and the appointment of 
some by the people or the legislature, and of others by the 
executive ; are positious contended for by the same persons, 
and the same societies ; and habit and prejudice can supply 
the firmness with which these contradictions are defended, 
•* Judicial independency" and " chartered rights" are the 
sounds which induce us to fall into them. Corporation 
judges are elected by the people and periodically changed ; 
national judges are appointed by the king, and hold at the 
will of the parliament. Charles the second destroyed char* 
ters, for the purpose of transferring from corporations to 
himself the appointment of judges and other officers, as a 
prelude to despotism. The judges of the union are appointed 



GOVERNMENT QY THE V. STATES. 215 

as Charles designed to appoint corporation judges. His 
mode for assailing liberty, is ours for defending it. As a 
monarch, he wished to destroy the republican corporation 
mode of appointments ; as a republick, we adopt the mode, 
which Charles conceived to be monarchical. A million of 
souls in London, and possibly nearly half that number in our 
towns, consider their elective judges as the best guardians 
of liberty and property ; and the dismay of corporations, if 
deprived of this chartered right, would be equal to that of 
the friends to monarchy, if national judges Mere made elec- 
tive and responsible. A furious zeal will often exist in the 
same state and in the same person for elective, or periodi- 
cal, or responsible state or corporation judges, and for exe- 
cutive, permanent and insubordinate federal judges. The 
case occurs among the states of elective and periodical chan- 
cery judges ; the habit and prejudice of England and of such 
states, are both portrayed in this imitation ; property is as 
deeply affected by chancery judges as by law judges ; and 
their power is uncontrolled by juries. To such habits and 
prejudices, and not to reason, a few of the states have sur- 
rendered our foundation principle of responsibility, in con- 
stituting state judicial power, and all of them in the case of 
federal judicial power. Reason is an umpire between con- 
tradictions, but she cannot reconcile them. 

Names cannot change man's nature, and cure him of his 
passions and vices ; if they could, this discovery would have 
superseded the necessity of all our inventions for curbing the 
passions and vices of publick officers, by calling them judges. 
An experiment somewhat like this was tried by the Jews, 
but they gave it up for monarchy. 

It is objected, that a responsible judge may be intimi- 
dated or seduced by a faction. Why is not the sanie objec- 
tion advanced against a responsible legislature or executive ? 
"Because the confidence begotten by responsibility, protects 
these characters. Impeachment, it is said, will restrain 
the judge; will it also protect him, and purchase national 
confidence ? A faction must rule the government, before it 



%l% THE EVIL MORAL PRINCIPLES OE THE 



can 



intimidate or corrupt a judge ; ami will judges appoint- 
ed by it, patronised by it, and tried by it, be safe against its 
influence ? They are placed within the power of alternate 
factions, lest they should be influenced by factions ; and 
without the power of the nation* lest they should be influ- 
enced by the nation. They fear party vengeance, and can- 
not expect national confidence or protection. If they were 
responsible to the sovereignty, they would expect its pro- 
tection against demagogues and factions ; but if they are 
independent of the sovereignty, they must depend on the 
faction which ean try and condemn theto. A paper, theo- 
retick, didactick independence cannot shield judges against 
the influence or corruption of a man or a faction, possessing 
an intimidating or corrupting degree of power or patron- 
age. If the cause of the terror or treachery exists, the 
terror or treachery naturally and inevitably ensues. Which 
is the best remedy against the evil ; to create the cause, 
and to underwrite the " judges shall be independent of 
this cause of terror or corruption," or to forbear to create 
it ? If the national confidence and protection through the 
medium of responsibility is added to this forbearance, it is 
probable, that judicial integrity, the object in quest, will be 
well secured. If a liability to impeachment is a security 
for this integrity, why is it not exclusively relied on to pro- 
duce legislative integrity? If a responsibility to the sove- 
reign power, exposes integrity to the influence of an indi- 
vidual or a faction, why is the legislature thus exposed ? 

A deviation from one principle is the road leading to 
another. Being taught that the insubordination of judicial 
power, will wash away human vices and passions, and that 
national opinion will corrupt it ; we shall no longer consider 
this opinion as the most incorruptible species of political 
jury, and the only safe guardian of liberty and property. 
And our respect for the basis of our policy being once weak- 
ened, it will be gradually undermined, by diminishing the 
responsibility of legislative and executive power, until we 



GOVERNMENT OE THE V. STATES. 217 

come to Mr. Adams's republiek, composed of a hereditary 
executive and senate, and of septennial election. 

The absence of responsibility is an evil moral principle, 
from which it is impossible that good moral effects can flow. 
And the consequences to be expected from an insubordinate 
power, able to knead and mould a constitution by construc- 
tion, disallow indigenous law, introduce foreign law, fine, 
imprison and hang ; and which in the struggles of avarice 
or ambition for wealth and power, must become their in- 
strument ; forcibly illustrate the correctness of our politi- 
cal analysis. 

If, by the intervention of electors, or in any other mode, 
judicial power could be made responsible to national sove- 
reignty, as are all our political departments, it is -highly 
probable that it might be raised to the quality of such a 
department, with powers defined and limited ; and that its 
elevation might become an important improvement of the 
principle of division. But a judicial sovereignty over con- 
stitution and law, without responsibility to the national 
sovereignty, is an unprincipled and novel anomaly, unknown 
to any political theory, and fitted to become an instrument 
of usurpation. If judicial power was intended iohe advanc- 
ed from municipal to political quality, responsibility ought 
to have followed the advancement according to the elements 
of our policy; if not, its quality is merely municipal, and 
its claims of political rights, usurpations drawn from the 
limited nature of our governments, by which judicial power 
has constituted itself the guardian of all the rights retained 
by the people, 

It resembles a legislature compounded of two branches, 
chambers o: , The upper bench can pass $o judge- 

ment, unless it has been previously passed by the lower; 
nap-can • fie judgement or verdict aspast by the lower; 

money bills in England and Virginia. T 
sepii actions bear a e}os,e analogy to the mod 

g in England about the thirteenth century 
v he . s dilated 

19 



18 THE EVIL MORAL PRINCIPLES OP THE 

it into technical form. If the matter of the parliament was 
of more importance than the form given to it by the. judges* 
juries are not the least important judicial bench. By ad- 
hering repeatedly to the same verdict, they can force the 
upper bench to pass judgements against their opinions ; they 
can impose both law and fact on the upper bench, which 
can impose no Fact or law upon them ; and they judge really 
and substantially in every case, whereas the judgement of the 
upper bench Is in most cases a mere formulary prescribed 
hy their verdict. What better title has one judieial bench 
or chamber, and that the least powerful too. to the epithet 
*« judicial," than the House of Lords in England, or the 
Senate of the United States, to the epithet " legislative ?" 
Was it intended to erect less than a moiety of judicial power 
into a political department, and even to endow this fragment 
with an irresponsible supremacy over the entire legislative 
and executive departments, by giving it an exclusive power 
to construe the constitution and annul laws ? 

Our aukward imitation of English policy, and miscon- 
ception of its phrase, " judicial independence," is displayed 
in our lower judicial bench, as well as in the upper. We 
have made one dependent on a creature of our sovereignty, 
to avoid the old English errour of its dependence on a por- 
tion of theirs j and the other on the president through his 
marshal, in Imitation of its English dependence through the 
sheriffs, In striving to exalt, we have degraded the judieial 
character, if it is more honourable to be dependent on the 
third part than on no part of a sovereignty. This degradation 
as to juries arises from our having overlooked them as com- 
posing a portion of judicial power, because the English over- 
looked and left them under the influence of the crown, when 
they placed the judges under the influence of the sovereignty. 
We contend, that adequate salaries, not to be diminished ; 
a tenure for life, only to he lost by crime or death, and not 
by folly, ignorance, incapacity, lunacy or idiocy ; and n 
complete exemption from the influence of the sovereign, arc 
all necessary to secure the independence of judges, and we 
eT^cvt Use independence of iuries, from no salary, an 



GOVERNMENT OF THE TJ. STATES. 21i> 

ephemeral tenure, and the culling of !an administration party 
spirit for each particular case. 

It is evidently of equal or superior importance to life*; 
liberty and property, that juries should be independent of 
kings, presidents, factions, and demagogues, as that judges 
should be so. The verdicts under the sedition law were the 
ground work of the judgements. Judges were made inde- 
pendent of the crown in England, because judgements were 
made instruments of tyranny. Verdicts of juries may be- 
come such instruments. A president can select juries of 
his own faction, by his officer, the marshal, and infallibly 
mould political verdicts. 

The king of England often iiriluene.es verdicts by means 
of a sheriff, less dependent on him, than a marshal on the 
president. The office of sheriff is both less lucrative than 
the office of marshal ; one is rotary, and the other capable 
of continuance by the will of the president. The continu- 
ance of a great income tempts ; and the certainty of return- 
ing speedily into private life, does not deter, in the case of 
the marshal. Accordingly we meet with many acquittals in 
England, and with few or none in the United States, in 
prosecutions under sedition laws. 

The dependence of one judicial branch on the sovereign- 
ty of tha country, is some security against the dependence of 
the other on the crown; for in England we find judges 
sometimes deciding contrary to the will of executive power', 
since their dependence on the sovereignty of the country. 

Here, a security against executive infiuenee oyer juries, 
is rendered more necessary, by the irresponsibility of tlm 
judges to the sovereignty, and none is provided. The de- 
pendence of judges on the sovereignty (the security against 
packed juries, and the source of all those acts for which 
English judges have been celebrated) h both relinquished 
in the United States, and a provision is also made for cor- 
rupting or influencing them by an additional o • n ex- 
ecutive power, an lieu of the parliamentary vote. 



220 THE EVIL MORAL PRINCIPLES OF THE 

By using English words, and subverting English princi- 
ples, we have made a judicial power independent of the 
sovereignty, and almost entirely dependent on executive will. 
The jury branch is unequivocally so ; and the upper branch 
is rendered more so than in England, by its independence of 
the sovereignty, and capacity to receive executive patron- 
age. And if executive influence in England over judicial 
power, sheds the blood of patriots, it is improbable that in 
America it will turn its fury against traitors to patriotism. 
In shewing that by some strange fatality, the constitution 
of the United States had abandoned the precedent it intend- 
ed to copy, and violated the principle it intended to estab- 
lish, namely, « that judicial power ought to be independent 
of and unbiassed by executive power," no use has been made 
of the remedy by impeachment, because it is nearly equiva- 
lent in both countries, but somewhat worse in the United 
States. Neither the Senate nor the House of Lords constitutes 
the sovereignty ; one represents a factitious being, called 
states, the other is itself a factitious being, called a privi- 
leged order. The Senate of the United States is a branch 
of executive power, which is not the case with the House of 
Lords. It is a party in the appointment of the judges, it 
has the exclusive privilege of trying, which is not the case 
with the House of Lords. Judicial responsibility to the 
House of Lords was not a sufficient security fur the national 
interest, because it was only a portion of the sovereignty ; 
and therefore a responsibility to the entire sovereignty h pro- 
vided. The objections apply with five-fo!d force to the 
Senate of the United States. 1st. The whole body is an 
executive order, participating in all important executive 
functions. 2dly. The whole body is an order as represent- 
ing the factitious portion of the sovereignty of the United 
States, called states, which from its nature can only act by 
representation, and not in person, like the factitious portion 
of the English sovereignty, called nobility. 3dly. One sec- 
tion of the Senate is composed of an. order or separate inte- 
rest, representing large states. 4thly. The vihei' section, of 



GOVERNMENT OF THE U. STATES. %%% 

an interest representing small states ; and lastly, tlie Senate 
constitutes no portion of the sovereignty of the United 
States. As the House of Lords would be partial to judges 
who had sacrificed the publiek interest, to the interest of 
the noble order ; so the Senate would be partial to those who 
had sacrificed the popular interest, to the interest of the 
state governments. So far the insufficiency of impeach- 
ment to secure responsibility to the publiek interest, is 
equal ; but the four other objections to the Senate, render 
the insufficiency of judicial responsibility by impeachment, 
greater in the United States than in England, where expe- 
rience disclosed the necessity of an additional responsibility 
to the whole sovereignty. There is very little difference 
between making judges responsible to the functionary who 
nominates or who approves. They form in union the executive 
power which appoints. They never thought in England of 
trusting to an impeachment before the king, for judicial 
independence and integrity. In England, the effort has 
been to prevent judges from being responsible to the power 
appointing them ; here, to make them so. Against execu- 
tive influence over the upper judicial branch, we have only 
the security of impeachment before a section of executive 
power; and against the same influence over the lower 
judicial branch, we have no security at all. The expres- 
sion, " reserved to the states or to the people," implies the 
dual nature of the general government, and each portion 
ought to possess some security. over judicial power for tike 
preservation of its reservations. The latter has none. 
former, one mingled with executive influence, party spirit; 
and a remediless contumacy -of individuals for six } ( 

The inefficaey of impeachment from its own nature, to 
■produce the contemplated responsibility, Las not bee 
In all political cases, it is guided by party, faction, revenge 
or prejudice. Sentences flowing from the trees* are 

neither sustained by pubiick respect, nor ( ed to pro- 

duce judicial Integrity J:ndges, to escape the vengeance of 
impeachment, must : lie passions which inflict if, in 



222 Xii£ EYJX MORAL PRINCIPLES OP THE 

place of consulting the publick good. As integrity is no 
protection, and guilt uo prognostick of conviction, this ven- 
geance excites commiseration, and procures respect. And 
jet, at an epoch when the impeachment of judges has fallen 
into disgrace and disuse in England, where it was invented ; 
it is exclusively relied on in the United States, as the reme- 
dy against the influence of executive over judicial power. 
A remedy, in which conviction will seldom be thought a 
proof of guilt. 

It is a policy founded in an obvious contradiction. The 
judges for trying ordinary and private cases, are instituted 
for life, and absolved from a subjection to the silent suffrage 
of the whole sovereignty, which might send them quietly 
into retirement, without throwing t\\G firebrand of impeach- 
ment amidst the worst passions with which society is af- 
flicted. But the judges of the highest officers of govern- 
ment, and the most important publick cases, are instituted 
for only six years, and subject to dismission by a silent vote 
of representatives of sections of the sovereignty. If a res- 
ponsibility to one of these sections by election, will secure 
judicial integrity and independence in these major eases, 
where it is most likely to fail ; a responsibility to the whole 
sovereignty or its representatives, will secure it in the minor 
eases, where it is less likely to fail. And if the independ- 
ence and integrity of the senatorial judges is not secured 
under their periodical election by state legislatures, then 
impeachment before judges without independence and in- 
tegrity, is no security for the independence and integrity of 
the judges to be impeached. 

To determine the propriety of leaving in the hands of 
executive power, its influence over judicial, it is necessary 
to comprehend what is meant by judicial independence. If 
it means that judicial power ought to be independent of the 
sovereignty and the government, and constituted into an 
umpire between these parties, to administer the constitution 
to both ; then the price paid for it would be the dependence 
of the station and the government, upon judicial power. But 



GOVERNMENT 02 THE V. STATES. 223 

this construction is violated by making it responsible to a 
section of one. If it means, that the judicial section of gov- 
ernment ought to be independent of any other section, a 
responsibility to the sovereignty is consistent, and a respon- 
sibility to a section of the government inconsistent with this 
meaning. To one of these interpretations, the idea of 
judicial independence must be confined. By the first, ju- 
dicial power would be made despotick ; by the second, a 
responsibility to a section of the government is forbidden, 
because it makes judicial power dependent on that section, 
if a responsibility to the sovereignty would make it depend- 
ent on the sovereignty. No mode exists to avoid the di- 
lemma of one of these constructions, but that of making 
judges responsible to the sovereignty or its representative, 
but independent of every section of the government. 

Legislative power could not be independent, if legislators 
were liable to impeachment before a court for legislative 
acts; yet it would be equally so with judicial power, liable 
to impeachment for judicial acts before the senate ; and 
legislative power is considered as independent, though it is 
dependent on the sovereignty; demonstrating that the term 
only implies, an independence of other branches of the gov- 
ernment. The independence of judicial power is intended 
to prevent its being made an instrument of tyranny by 
another branch, not to make it a tyranny itself. If it is plac- 
ed beyond the coercion of sovereignty, and made responsible 
to another branch of a government, it is forged exactly into 
the instrument intended to be avoided. Its responsibility to 
the English king, and independence of the parliament or 
sovereignty of the country, made it such an instrument. 
Had this responsibility been transferred from the king to the 
House of Lords, it would have remained such an instru- 
ment. 

It has been heretofore denied that the judicial power 
possessed an exclusive privilege to determine the constitu- 
tionality of a law ; and asserted, that juries and private in- 
dividuals participate in this riqht, upon the ground of the 



THE EVIL MOKAX PRINCIPLES OP THE 

":tx of every act by a delegated authority, not warranted 
by the delegation. In support of these opinions, we must 
set* that judges constitute but one judicial bench 
or branch, and that a verdict must be sent to them by the 
bench before they can make a judgement ; just as a bill 
must be sent by one legislative branch to another, before it 
can a law. Are the jury bound to draw and pass 

this verdict without even considering its constitutionality ? 
What would be the complexion of a legislature, with one 
branch under such an obligation ? Suppose the constitution 
had expressly invested the court and jury with a power to 
disallow a law by proclamation as void, and that the court 
had proclaimed to that, effect, hut the jury oppositely. Even 
if an individual is tried for violating a law. because he judg- 
ed it to be unconstitutional, he is acquitted if he judged 
; proving that he had a right to judge. 

But although judicial power has no right to enact or re- 
peal law, yet it can effect both ends to great extent by its 
judgements in private cases ; and it has often done so for the 
purpose of making political or revolutionary law. The 
iges destroyed the law of intails, to weaken the 

er of the nobility, and strengthen the power of the king. 
The same judges affirmed a law for extending the power of 
the House of Commons from three years to seven, and thus 
made the only fragment of the government, over which the 
people had a feeble power, independent of them. And the 
es of the United States have declared an entire code of 
; passed in a foreign nation some centuries before the 
union, to be laws of the union ; although the constitution i^ 
literally prospective both as to legislation and the organs of 
legr Had our judges decided differently, their de- 

m would have repealed the common law code. WU1 
inqui ether their decision is right or wrong, it sufit- 

ees for o'jr argument to shew, that sueh is the eonne: 
bciv ina and ttideingr, that one may be easiivrim 

into * ; and that it is impossible to keep these p#m 

id distinct, as o requires. If tlr 



GOVERNMENT OF THE V. STATES. 225 

true, where is the consistency of concluding that one species 
oflegislation ought to be independent of the sovereignty 
and another responsible to it ? If congress had by law de- 
clared the common law of England to be in force, the peo 
pie could by election have enforced a repeal of this law, but 
a similar law is passed by judges whom the people cannot 
compel to repeal it. 

The treaty making power is purely executive, or at least 
the entire natural sovereignly of the country, is excluded 
from sharing in it. By « natural,' 5 1 mean the people. 
State governments are artificial beings, and nearly the 
whole treaty making power is the creature of these artifi- 
cial beings. It is not meant to discuss the propriety of 
making law by treaties, without the assent of the natural 
sovereignty or its representative, and by a moiety of a legis- 
lature, but this mode of legislation is exhibited to illustrate 
the defectiveness of judicial responsibility to the sovereign- 
ty. In this mode, the sections of the government which 
appoint and try judicial power can make laws. These laws 
may have great political influence and gradually change our 
policy; and yet the sections of the government which make 
them, are only responsible to their own creatures and de- 
pendents. Had judges and juries been responsible to the 
sovereignty, it might more safely have established a species 
oflegislation, in which it does not participate. Treaties 
may more easily and plausibly extend executive and sena- 
torial power, than the time of service of the English House 
of Commons was extended ,• and judicial power might be 
the instrument for enforcing such laws and subverting our 
policy. It is as easy to pack laws by means of treaties, as 
to pack juries by a different executive engine. The ques- 
tion is, whether a judicial power, responsible to the executive 
branches, which branches have an exclusive right to legis- 
late through treaties, is a sound elieck upon the constitu- 
tionality of this species of legislation ? Executive power 
is the universal destroyer of every sovereignty like ours, and 
ottf sovereignty invests its natural enemy with an exclusive 

SO 



IM THE EVIX MORA& P1U2JCIFLES OE THE 

y 

power of legislating, empanelling juries, and appointing ano 
trying judges. 

Our first criticism of the legislative principles of the 
United States, is directed of course to the sexennial elec- 
tion of senators. The degree in which an independency of 
publick opinion for six years, is able to -efface legislative in- 
tegrity, and excite disloyalty and avarice, beyond an annual 
responsibility, by figures and theory, is as six to one. By 
experience, it is nearly demonstrated in the British House 
of Commons. The maxim « that tyranny begins where 
annual election ends," subscribed to by Mr.- Adams in the 
prime of life, and copiously applied by the people of the 
United States, is deserted ami reversed in the eases to wliieh 
politicians have thought it most applicable ; where the pow- 
er delegated was most dangerous. And the reversal of this 
maxim in the tenure of the president and senators of the 
United States, may possibly be as mortal to our policy, as 
the desertion of that so nearly allied to it, whieh dictated 
consular rotation, was to the policy of Rome. 

The long official tenure of the Senate of the United 
States has been, unwarily suffered, from mistaking it for 
an aristocratic al balance, whereas it is a body organized up- 
on democratical principles, to equalise the rights of states, 
great and small, rich or poor; and to prevent aristocratieal 
privileges or powers from being usurped by superior 
strength or wealth. The United States, far from intending 
to introduce an aristocratieal principle by the senate, sub- 
mitted to this equalising democratical regulation, for the 
same reasons that rich and strong men submit to an equali- 
ty of rights with the poor and weak. In considering there- 
fore the Senate's time of service, we ought to be guided, 
not by a false, but hy the true motive for its form ; and to 
discern that t\\Q question is not whether a long or a short 
official tenure is best to sustain an aristocratieal balance, 
but which is best to sustain a democratical equality between 
unequal states. Whieh is best to sustain a democratical 
equality of rights between men unequal In. wealth or 



GOVERNMENT OF THE U. STATES, Zzl; 

strength, is exactly the same question. A long official 
tenure will produce in both cases the same effects. If an 
independence of the will of constituents, for a period almost 
amounting to the probable duration of the incumbent's life* 
would instil aristocratical principles into the functionaries 
substituted to preserve democratieal rights between Indi- 
viduals, the same cause will instil the same principles into 
those constituted to preserve the same rights between states. 
The infusion must be healthy or poisonous as to both ob- 
jects, or as to neither ; and the question simply is, whether 
it is good or bad ; and not whether it is of the singular 
quality, to cure, drank out of *me eup, but to kill from 
another ; just as the same popish relict will draw down bles- 
sings upon the orthodox, and curses upon the heretical. 

But the exposure of legislative power to executive in- 
fluence, is unquestionably the heel of Achilles, omitted to be 
immortalized by an ablution in good moral principles, and 
left exposed to the poisoned shafts of corruption. 

The division and responsibility of power* and the inde- 
pendence of political departments of ^eaeh other* are the 
vital principles of our policy. 

The legislature, as the most powerful political depart- 
ment, ought not to be influenced by one less powerful, be- 
cause a weaker power able tomake a stronger subservient to 
its views, acquires an unconstitutional force. What can ex- 
ceed the absurdity, of considering the principle of separating 
departments, and delegating different powers to each, as es- 
sential to a free government ; and yet providing an influ- 
ence for executive over legislative power, which enables it 
really to legislate, contrary both to the theory and letter of 
the constitution ? The king of England would be a weaker 
power, than an independent House of Commons fairly elect- 
ed ; yet, the influence which annexes their power to hirH 
makes him irresistable. Congress, as constituting a com 
plete legislature, was intended to be placed in a siate of fa: 
greater independence of the president, than the lords awl 
commons were of the king- 



^28 THE EVIL MORAL PRINCIPLES OF THE 

He who can apply fear or hope to the human mind, ob- 
tains subserviency to his designs. A president may bestow 
offices and contracts upon members of congress, which ex- 
cite the fears and hopes of all men; therefore he may ob- 
tain an influence over their minds, and destroy or lessen the 
independence of the legislature. His gradual progress in 
this work, and not the constitution, will become the ther- 
mometer of his power, in which the mercury may rise and 
fall, until war and debt shall fix it at the English stand- 
ard. And the lines drawn by the principle of a division of 
power may be gradually effaced, by a commerce between 
the departments of government, without the concurrence of 
the sovereign power. These lines were intended to be fixed 
by the constitution ; and their fluctuation is as inconsistent 
with common honesty, as with any definite form of govern- 
ment. 

The effect of executive influence, interwoven by law with 
a form of government, although it is disowned as one of its 
principles, is before our eyes in England ; its effect in the 
United States may be estimated, by comparing the means 
by which it is worked there, with the means by which it 
may be worked here. 

The chief circumstances in which the eases disagree, are 
the elective and hereditary qualities of the two executives 5 
the influence of a senate over the president in the exercise of 
his patronage, and of a council or ministry over the king t 
and the ineligibility to the legislature of all officers appoint- 
ed by the president, whilst a part of the officers appointed 
by the king are re-eligible. They agree in a common ca- 
pacity for directing the artillery of executive patronage, 
against legislative integrity ; both bestow offices created and 
continued, and both dispense money raised by law. 

We have shewn that an annual power, by means of the 
disbursement of a nation's money and offices, has often en- 
slaved it. The uncertainty of its tenure, whets its inclina- 
tion to use the opportunity of acquiring one more perma- 
nent* And therefore it is more dangerous to entrust peri- 



GOVERNMENT OF THE U. STATES. 230 

odical than hereditary power with the means of acquiring 
undue influence. It has less to lose and more to gain. A 
king, though limited by orders as in England, would have 
weaker motives to impel him towards usurpation, than a 
president, liable to become a private citizen at the end of 
four years. Yet this king has been induced to corrupt the 
legislature for the sake of getting more power, "When we 
entrust the same means to stronger motives for using them* 
the moral consequence is, that they will be used. 

The ineligibility of an officer appointed by the president, 
is an addition to his influence. Pictures of an office, •©- 
loured by the imagination, will be contemplated and admir- 
ed by many members ; and whilst one office in England can 
only corrupt one member, because it is to be paid for after 
it is received ; here it may corrupt several, becauie it must 
be paid for before it is received. 

These trivial varieties constitute all the additional secu- 
rity for legislative independence here, whilst the plain coin- 
cidence in the decisive fact, of an ability in both executive* 
to bestow office and money upon members of the legislature, 
demonstrates the certainty of a concurrence in effect. From 
the period in which Philip destroyed the liberties of Grteee, 
by corrupting her orators, down to the present moment, at 
which we are hearing the groans of England, produced by 
the corruption of her orators ; there is no instance of nation- 
al safety or happiness, having been produced by a power in 
one man to corrupt eminent legislative talents. 

It is better for a nation to have no elective legislature, 
than one which can furnish an individual with money and 
offices, and receive them from him ; because this commerce 
requires more money and offices, than executive power 
would need without a legislature ; and because the abuse 
would be more clearly seen, if the executive power created 
the national oppressions, whieh it dispensed in patronage. 
The English patronage produces heavier burdens to the 
iiation, than it would do, if there was no House of Com- 
mons. A poor effort to meet this enormous evil, is made by 



ISO THE EVIL MOBAL FRINCIPLES OF THE 

our constitution, in an inhibition on the legislature to takt 
new offices created by itself. It acknowledges the evil by 
an insufficient attempt to prevent it. The remedy does not 
pretend to provide for the case of money, to be gotten by 
contracts ; insuffices for the case of old offices unnecessarily 
retained ; and may be wholly evaded by transplanting offi- 
cers. 

Suppose the constitution had contained the following ar- 
ticle : "The legislative, executive and judicial powers 
*< shall be distinct and independent of each other : that is 
si to say, the president may influence the judges, by appoint- 
** ing and preferring them ; and he may influence the legis- 
■" lature by means of offices and money, created, and raised 
« by the legislature." Would this plain language have ob- 
tained the publick approbation ? 

It is admitted by Mr. Adams and all wlio defend the sys- 
tem of limited monarchy, that the safety of the plebeian or- 
der, rests upon the independence of its representatives of 
the other two orders. If either of these orders can influ- 
ence these representatives, the limitation is abolished, and 
the plebeian order is enslaved. Integrity and fraud will 
share equally in the suspicions excited by a power to cor 
rupt ; and a want of confidence in popular representatives, 
will work in concert with bribery and corruption, to destroy 
the liberty which these representatives were instituted t«y 
defend. 

An opinion, that the confidence of the people is lost, or 
a conviction that it is not merited, will eradicate from the 
mind of the representative a reliance upon the people, and 
plant fear and hatred in its place. This fear and hatred, 
combining with the influence of office and money, will pro- 
duce an alliance against the people, between their own 
agents, and the power these agents were designed to con- 
trol. If this reasoning is justified by the test of moral 
-Qause and effect; it is also justified by the experience of 
-England. Theoretically and practically it results, that a 
fiower in one man to bestow offices and money upofi ? 



isl9VEBWMBNT ©F THE tT. STATES*, 2S1 

rational legislature, is an evil principle ; that it is an evil 
principle, so malignant as to eat out the best qualities of 
limited monarchy, and strengthen the worst; and that being 
homogeneous with the worst qualities of limited monarchy? 
it cannot be so, with the best qualities of republican govern- 
ment. 

The system of a balance of orders, is bottomed upon the 
idea of some natural or political enmity, between the one ? 
the few and the many. A power in the one, to corrupt the- 
representatives of the many, is a mode of protecting the 
many against his enmity, inconsistent with the understand 
ings of all mankind. No people can confide in representa- 
tives whom a. king ean influence $ no king will confide in 
ministers whom the people can influence ; and no individual 
would trust his liberty and property to an arbitrator wh<?> 
expected from his antagonist a good office. As an executive 
power, to bestow offices on the representatives of the pie- 
beian order, overturns all the principles of the system of 
balances ; so executive power to bestow offices upon the 
representatives of a nation, will overturn all the principles 
of national self govern ment ; because there is so little dif- 
ference between a plebeian order, and an entire nation, that 
the representative corruption, capable of subjugating the 
one, may fee safely considered as capable of subjugating the 
other. 

If the principle of executive patronage over the legisla- 
ture* under the ©onstitution of the United States, is calcu- 
lated to produce all the evils- which the same principle pro- 
duces in England, and an additional number, springing from 
our policy, to which the English policy is not exposed ; 
nothing can more justly merit constitutional extermination- 
An additional malignancy flows from the temporary and 
elective qualities of our executive power. 

A president will be reduced to the alternative of using 
his patronage to corrupt the legislature, or of losing his office. 
35y withholding from leading members? what they desire 
and he can^ive^ a president purchases their enmity ^ »f tV* 



£32 t^HE EVIL MORAL PRINGEPIES OF THE 

could receive nothing from him, there would exist no canst 
for this enmity. With this legislative patronage, reputa- 
tion and re-election will depend upon a crafty management 
of money and office ; without it, both would depend on merit. 
In the first case, legislative testimony will be nothing but 
the tricks and artifices of rapacity and ambition ; and sedi- 
tion laws for locking up both truth and calumny, would be 
preferable to these tricks and artifices ; under an exclusion 
of executive patronage, legislative testimony as to the con- 
duct and character of a president, would be unsuborned. 

A president, with a patronage over the legislature, 
must have a sort of praetorian cohorts. They will appear* 
and force themselves into employ ment, wherever an indivi- 
dual exists who can pay them. If a president disappoints 
the expectations of these legislative cohorts, he dies to the 
presidency ; they can more safely attempt the political life 
of a good president, than disappointed military cohorts 
could the natural life of a good emperour. The motives are 
the same in both cases, and exact ly those which draw forth 
from men their worst vices. Nor is there any difference 
between the largesses from quaternial presidents, and succes- 
sive emperours under the Romaui systew of military mur- 
der and election, with respect to ai nation, extept the result 
of a calculation, whether quaternial election, or irregular 
periodical murder, will have most effect, in exciting and 
spreading the corruption of executive patronage. 

It is so vicious, as to deprive the patron of the power of 
remaining virtuous. Hence good men were suddenly chang- 
ed into wieked emperours. An ability in elected emper- 
ours to corrupt an electing army, destroyed their virtues. 
An elective president will be himself corrupted by an ability 
to corrupt a legislature. Importunity will assail him. Op- 
position will excite him. Ambition will entice him. Ava- 
rice will harden him. Driven on by his faction, and his pas- 
sions, his virtue will seldom make an;y resistance ; its strug- 
gles will be speedily suppressed by the host of foes, with 
which his power of patronage over th$ legislature, will eaus« 
It to be assailed. 



GOVERNMENT OF THE U. STATES, 238 

It is a political drum beating for recruits, notifying 
where the bounty for taking the field against virtue, is to 
be had ; and as the way to this bounty lies through the le- 
gislature, it draws the most impure qualities of human na- 
ture into the field of election, where the purest are necessa^ 
ry to sustain republican government. By invigorating and 
exciting the activity of our worst qualities to obtain popular 
favour, Mr. Adams's charge against election, of an insuffi- 
ciency to select virtue and talents, may be made true. These 
evil qualities will not in the legislature forget the motives 
which drew them thither; they will not forget that legis- 
lative hands can reach the richest coffers of executive pa- 
tronage. But they will forget that it is the duty of legisla- 
tors to advance the publick good, and their worst vice to 
sacrifice it to their own avarice or ambition. 

It is essential to the purity of our policy, that the legis- 
lature should be unable to translate or prefer executive and 
judicial agents to more desirable offices ; upon what ground 
is the translation or preferment of legislative agents to 
more desirable offices, by executive or judicial power, unes- 
sential to its purity? Is it less dangerous to society, .that 
the legislature should be corrupted or influenced by the ex- 
ecutive or judiciary, than that these departments should be 
corrupted or influenced by the legislature ? 

A prohibition upon the legislature to influence members 
of the executive and judicial departments by office, proves 
that this identical species of influence was considered as 
destructive of the principle of division of power. An allow- 
ance' to these departments to influence the legislature by 
office, will destroy the principle of division, or what some 
may call, the independence between departments, precisely 
in the same mode, as it would have been destroyed, by al- 
lowing the legislature thus to influence them. The whole 
difference is in the effect. The prohibited legislative patron- 
age, might have worked slowly towards aristocracy ; the al- 
lowed executive patronage, will work rapidly towards mon- 
archy. 

31 



$&h THE EVXL MORAL PRINCIPLES OF THE 

Stronger reasons exist for shielding legislative power 
against the influence of executive and judicial patronage? 
than for shielding these departments against legislative pa- 
tronage ; the legislature can supply them with money and 
offices? which they may give hack to the members of the 
legislature ; whereas they cannot furnish the legislature 
with either, to be given back to themselves. Offices and 
money, created or sustained, and taxed by the legislature, 
are distributed by the executive ; and the bankrupt law en- 
dowed judicial power with considerable patronage $ so that 
the legislature can extend, sustain, diminish, or cause to 
fluctuate, executive and judicial patronage, as it is pleased or 
displeased with the returns to itself. 

It would even have been better, that the legislature 
should have been allowed to distribute among its members, 
a portion of the offices and money, produced by its laws, 
than to take them back from executive power; because 
thus it would have been shielded against executive or mo- 
narchical influence, and a power so direct to patronise 
itself, would have awakened the publick jealousy; which an 
indirect mode of effecting the same end, is calculated to 
lull. Then the evil would have been seen ; now, the inter- 
lude between law and appointment (the puppets of legisla- 
tive corruption and executive patronage) may hide the evih 
Both modes of patronage are seeds of moral and political 
evil ; one is cultivated openly and directly ; it is therefore 
infinitely less pernicious, as is evinced in the instance of 
state legislative patronage ; the other is cultivated secretly 
and indirectly, and is therefore infinitely more pernicious, 
as is evinced in the case of England. 

/The arguments against shielding the legislature from 
executive patronage, are, that it may deprive patriots of 
merited reward, and the community of valuable services. 
Rewards to be bestowed by executive or monarchical am- 
bition, and services to be guided by executive or monarchi- 
cal designs. 



GOVERNMENT OF THE U. STATES. 23d 

Political merit, consists in preferring the service of a na- 
tion to the service of an individual ; individuals consider 
that quality as merit, which is subservient to their interest 
or designs; hence monarchs, instead of allowing merit to 
patriots, persecute them as traitors, A nation endeavours 
to select the genuine species of merit, an individual, the 
spurious ; one seeks for the means of producing pubiiek 
good ; the other, for the means of advancing selfish designs. 
National patronage is applied with a view to national self 
government ; individual patronage boys talents, or pacifies 
enmity, for the purpose of destroying national self govern- 
ment. Therefore popular patronage strives to reward such 
merit and to procure such services, as will advance republi- 
can principles ; and individual patronage, strives to reward 
merit and procure services, for advancing individual in- 
terest. 

The English example and universal experience prove? 
that the patronage of an individual corrupts what nations 
consider as merit and patriotism. To bestow on one man 
a great patronage, from a hope that it will reward the vir- 
tues which it destroys, is founded upon a probability, that a 
moral cause will produce a different effect here, from that 
which it has constantly produced elsewhere, and is now pro- 
ducing in England. 

By detaching the patronage of one man, into elective le- 
gislatures, to select talents for publick service, the nation 
will reap a harvest of services, as abundant as the harvest 
of rewards, which virtue and patriotism will reap. When 
one man dispenses the rewards to merit, merit will consist 
in our attachment to the interest of one man. When the 
legislature is converted into a school for those intrigues and 
artifices, begotten and nurtured by the admission of execu- 
tive patronage within its walls, the antipathy of the mind 
against fraud and deceit will be gradually erased; politicks 
will be converted into a science, too mysterious and compli- 
cated for popular comprehension ; and the diploma of profi- 
ciency will constitute the worst evidence of a title to na- 
tional rewards, but the best to executive, 



236 THE EVIL MORAL PRINCIPLES OF THE 

If the publick good requires, that members of the le< 
gislature should be incapable of receiving offices and con- 
tracts, from executive power, it would be immoral and 
wicked to betray it, for the sake of gratifying individuals* 
To elude this truth, the necessity of recurring to the talents 
assembled in legislative bodies, adequately to fill other offi- 
ces, is suggested. If this argument has weight, national 
self government cannot exist. It is simply Mr. Adams's 
idea of a natural aristocracy in a new form. Men are un- 
happily inclined to be disrespectful to themselves, by ad- 
mitting the idea of a monopoly and rareness of talents; and 
although the delusion is known to vanish, whenever it is 
examined, yet it continues to govern half the world, who 
only believe the fact, because they have never looked into 
the evidence. Thus they are willing to suffer the evil of 
executive patronage over the legislature, to gain for society 
tlie benefit of these unseen talents : as men have been wil- 
ling to suffer the evil of a corrupt priesthood, to gain for 
society the benefit of unfulfilled oracles. Whilst philosophy 
boasts of having exploded one species of idolatry, she falls 
herself into another : and having delivered mankind from 
the invisible agency of false gods, she subjects them to the 
invisible talents of false patriots. 

Above two thousand years past, the Romans annually 
found new talents in new consuls, capable of conducting pub- 
lack affairs, with unexampled prosperity. The French revo- 
lution has proved, that even military talents are scattered 
every where among men. All civilized nations, must have 
abundantly more men fit for office than offices to give them. 
No nation can support any form of popular government, where 
this is not the case. If then the United States have sent execu- 
tive patronage into their legislature for officers, from a sup- 
posed deficiency of talents without its pale, it is done upon a 
calculation which acknowledges their unfitness for any spe- 
cies of popular government. 

Had nature been accustomed to produce occasionally 
rare and extraordinary talents, it is highly ^uestionaWe 



GOVERNMENT OF THE IT. STATES. 237 

whether they would have been beneficial to mankind. Shall 
we believe erroneously thai she visits us with one calamity* 
in order to ^k upon ourselves another ? Shall we corrupt 
the legislature, to come at rare talents -which do not exist, 
and which would, if found, be a calamity; or be contented 
with such talents as nature does create, and with legislative 
integrity in the bargain ? If such menus Alexander, Csesar 
or Cromwell are examples of this vast superiority of talents, 
it would be belter to let them remain unknown, than to 
awaken them by executive patronage over legislative power. 

The truth is. that rare talents, like a natural aristocra- 
cy, are created by ignorance, and that cunning takes advan- 
tage of the opinion to scourge mankind. Ignorance is the 
source of slavery, and knowledge of liberty, because the 
first begets, and the other explodes the errour, " that some 
men are endowed with faculties, far exceeding the general 
standard." In thinking it necessary to send executive pa- 
tronage into legislative bodies to fill offices, lest the publick 
should lose the benefit of these imaginary faculties, we have 
adhered to one preceptor, who teaches nothing but slavery ; 
and rejected the admonitions of another, who alone teaches 
liberty. 

It will be admitted that virtue and talents are as neces- 
sary for legislative, as for any other kind of publick ser- 
vants; and that these qualities, transplanted by executive 
patronage into other departments, ought to be replaced by a 
full equivalent. If this reimbursement can be made* the 
pretext that a dearth of qualification for office, makes it ne- 
cessary to corrupt legislatures, in order -to obtain incorrupt 
officers, is false ; if it cannot, the exchange must be injuri- 
ous to the nation. In England, this argument would be less 
conclusive, on account of the eligibility of most of the great 
executive officers to the House of Commons, and the session 
of al! in the House of Lords. There the idea of a dearth of 
qualification for office, is countenanced by heaping otiices, 
civil, military, legislative, executive and judicial, upon one 
man. Here, we admit its truth by exposing the legislature 



m 8 THE EVIL MORAL PRINCIPLES OP THE 

to executive patronage, in imitation of the English preee* 
dent $ and assert its falsehood, by prohibiting accumulations 
of offices, And though the president remains isolated be- 
tween our affirmative and negative, we have copied it in a 
mode excessively increasing its malignity, first by the ineli- 
gibility which loses the purchase the instant it is paid for ; 
secondly, by the necessity for fresh means to corrupt or in- 
fluence such talents, as may appear after the best are trans- 
planted ; and thirdly, by the removal of the highest virtue 
and the best talents from the department, upon which the 
liberty and prosperity of nations must for ever depend. Inge- 
niously providing both a constant drain for publick treasure* 
and a constant drain of talents and virtue from legislatures ; 
and managing to extract from the evil principle of exposing 
them to the patronage of one man, the evil effects both of 
stupifying and demoralizing them, one of which has sufficed 
for the nation we have imitated. 

Let us consider the following extract from a late Eng 
lish author. " But the history of this reign," that of Hen- 
ry the 8th, " yields other lessons than those of a specula- 
4i tive morality; lessons which come home to the breast of 
** every Englishman, and which he ought to remember eve- 
** ry moment of his existence. It teaches us the most 
66 alarming of all political truths. That absolute despotism, 
u may prevail in a state, and yet the form of a free consti- 
4( tution remain. Nay, it even leads us to a conjecture 
*< still more interesting to Britons, that in this country an 
« ambitious prince may most successfully exercise his t\ * 
« rannies under the shelter of those harriers, which the con- 
66 stitution has placed as the security of national freedom, 
** Henry changed the national religion, and, in a great mea- 
*•' sure, the spirit of the laws of England. He perpetrated 
" the most enormous violences against the first men in the 
f kingdom ,• he loaded the people with oppressive taxes, and 
" he pillaged them by loans, which it was known lie never 
M meant to pay; hat he never attempted to abolish the parli- 
" anient:, or even to retrench any of its doubtful privileges* 



GOVERNMENT 0¥ THE V. STATES,, 239 

« The parliament was the prime minister of Ms tyrannical 
** administration. It authorised his oppressive taxes, it 
*' gave its sanction to Ms most despotick and oppressive mea- 
«? sures ; to measures, which of himself he durst not have 
« carried into execution ; or ivhich, if supposed to he merely 
« the result of Ms own arbitrary will, would have roused 
« the spirit of the nation to assert the rights of humanity, 
u and the privileges of a free people. Our admirable con- 
s' stitution is but a gay curtain to conceal our shame, and 
H the iniquity of our oppressors, unless our senators are ani- 
« mated by the same spirit which gave it birth. If they 
" can be overawed by threats, seduced from their duty 
^ by bribes, or allured by promises, another Henry may 
fi rule over us with a rod of iron, and drench once more 
« the scaffold with the best blood of the nation. The par- 
M liament will be the humble and secure instrument of his 
« tyrannies."* Henry's influence made " the parliament 
the prime minister of executive tyranny, and an instrument 
of the most despotick measures." 

Compare this influence of Henry's, with the present in- 
fluence of the crown in England, and consider, which pos- 
sesses in the highest degree, the properties of bribery, al- 
luring by promises, permanency, and capacity to convert a 
parliament " into the humble and secure instrument of ex- 
ecutive tyranny." Were Henry's parliaments more subser- 
vient to the crown in money matters, than those subjected 
to the modern species of influence ? Were his pecuniary 
oppressions more intolerable, than those which modern par- 
liaments sanction without difficulty? Or was his influence 
more systematick and regular, than that of the crown for 
the last century ? If not, the modern system by which ex- 
ecutive power influences legislative bodies, is more danger- 
ous than Henry's ; and his sufficed to make him a tyrant. 

Executive patronage over legislative bodies, is the es- 
sential quality of this modern system, and the only quality 
by which " parliaments can be made the prime ministers of 

* Modern Europe, v. 2, 294 8c 5. 



440 THE EVIL MORAL PRINCIPLES OF THE 

tyrannical administrations." By its means only, can "ab- 
solute despotism be introduced whilst the form of a free con- 
stitution remains." This alone is able to convert the only 
barrier against the usurpations of executive power, into a 
shelter for its intrigues, a sanction for its oppressions, a 
ii secure instrument" for its ambition, and a vehicle for re- 
volution to be effected " by changing the spirit of laws." 

Had our constitution been formed exactly upon the 
English model, that experiment would have been a map, 
upon which the progress of a government, guided by the vi- 
cious principle of executive patronage over legislative pow- 
er, could have been exactly traced. Is a principle, too vi- 
cious and corrupt for limited monarchy, sufficiently pure 
for a republican government ? Will limited monarchy ex- 
ist only in form, and be converted in fact by this principle 
into a despotism ; and will republican freedom exist in 
fact, exposed to the same legislative corruption, which has 
reduced limitations on monarchy to form ? 

Why should we conceal from ourselves the plain truth ? 
Representation is either the best security for a free govern- 
ment, or the best instrument for the most oppressive. In- 
fluenced by one man, it is an instrument ; uninfluenced, a se- 
curity. Need we reason upon the question ? Has not Eng- 
land a House of Commons, and France a tribunate ? 

In England, executive patronage has left the entire form 
of the constitution standing, and annihilated two thirds of its 
substance; it is formed of orders, and two of the three are 
reduced to cyphers or instruments. Here, though our con- 
stitution is not formed of king, lords and commons, or of 
any classification of men, but of the principles of division, 
responsibility, and national self government, yet executive 
influence over judicial and legislative power, can also des- 
troy its substance and leave its form standing, by converting 
the sentinels of the people into the instruments of ambition, 
and demolishing the efficacy of division by a corrupt unani- 
mity. 



GOTERyMEflT Of THE V, STATES. 241 

It may fall upon the house of representatives to elect 
a president, and each candidate may promise, and if lie is 
elected, bestow an office upon every elector. The same ef- 
fects will follow, as if the parliament was to elect a king. 
Executive patronage, in the real and supposed case, consti- 
tutes the utmost temptation to be treacherous to a nation, 
exactly where the publick good requires the utmost in- 
tegrity. It is impossible to contrive a better scheme than 
this for exciting the virulence of faction, by the goadings of 
ambition, avarice, self interest, and all the most violent pas- 
sions ; or to take a better chance for producing a civil war. 

Since oracles were exploded, no mode has been discov- 
ered for deceiving and oppressing nations, equally treacher- 
ous and successful with that of corrupting their representa- 
tives. Confidence, inspired by religion in the first case, and 
by election in the second, is the mantle for fraud in both. 
The influence of one man over a nation, fraudulently or 
forcibly exercised, is the essential principle of monarchy ; 
as a monopoly of wealth by an exclusive interest at the pub- 
lick expense, is of aristocracy. In a former part of this 
essay, an attempt was made to prove, that a mixture of mo- 
narchical and aristocratical ingredients in democratical sys- 
tems, caused those disorders, ascribed by Mr. Adams to in- 
accuracy in balancing them ; and that however commixed, 
their natural enmity would continue to produce pernicious 
effects, as in all former experiments. If executive influ- 
ence over legislative bodies, is a monarchical ingredient ; 
and if a paper system is an aristocratical ingredient ; all the 
horrours of a warfare among orders must ensue, either on 
Mr. Adams's principles or ours ; because, according to him, 
it cannot be prevented, except by an accurate balance of or- 
ders ; according to us, it cannot be prevented on account of 
their natural enmity to each other. 

The prospect of victory is on the side of executive pow- 
er. The code of its political tacticks, lies open in the ex- 
ample of England. That example may accelerate its suc- 
cess, by causing it to be expected. A president, by the 

3" 



%k% THE EVIL M0HAL PRINCIPLES OF THE 

legislative instrument, may provoke war, introduce funding 
and banking, raise armies, increase taxes, multiply offices, 
and commit the freedom of the press to the custody of pe- 
nal laws, with as much certainty and system as a British 
king,* and add to his own power, by throwing the odium of 
his ambitious practices upon Congress ; although, to bor- 
row the words of the last quotation, « he durst not of him- 
" self have carried such measures into execution ; or which, 
" if supposed to be merely the result of his own arbitrary 
« will, would have roused the spirit of the nation to assert 
« the rights of humanity, and the privileges of a free 
" people." 

If a president should, by an army, be rendered insuffor- 
dinate to the legislature, and able to terrify them into his 
measures, all would agree that neither free or republican 
government could possibly continue ; yet its manifest atro- 
ciousness would be some cheek upon the deed. If a presi- 
dent is not enabled to terrify, but only to bribe or influence 
a legislature into his measures, what would be the differ- 
ence? That between having one's wife ravished or seduced. 
Are not men safer against the first evil, and more frequent- 
ly rendered miserable by the second ? 

These criticisms neither impeach the general structure 
of the government, nor impinge upon any local interest. 
No doctrine is advanced, not adhered to by state constitu- 
tions, and none condemned, to which the people have sepa- 
rately assented. Had they approved of bestowing monar- 
chical powers upon an elective magistrate; of a judicial 
power insubordinate to the sovereignty, superior to the le- 
gislature, and subject to executive influence ; or of admit- 
ing corruption into the legislature by some crooked path ; 
an adherence to contrary principles would not have remain- 
ed visible in these constitutions. 

To bring the general and state governments under simi- 
lar principles, would contribute to the security of the union. 
Hostile elements will ultimately go to war. Hence the ex- 
periments of orders in all forms have failed. Their 



GOVERNMENT OE THE V. STATES. 2i3 

adverse principles have never been able to subsist peacea- 
bly together for any considerable time. Influence and in- 
subordination are the contraries of division and responsibili- 
ty ; and the same effects are produced by compounding a 
government of opposite and hostile orders of principles, as 
of hostile orders of men; because a contrariety in princi- 
ples causes the hostility among orders. 

This contrariety is the test to establish the sufficiency 
of our analysis for defining governments by moral princi- 
ples, and enabling us to foresee effects. We have, for in- 
stance, considered division of power, responsibility and 
legislative purity (one side of a contrariety) as good, 
and as producing good effects ; and monopoly, insubordi- 
nation and corruption (the other side) as evil, and as pro- 
ducing evil effects ; and deduced from these considerations 
the xeasoning of this part of our essay. The mode of ap- 
plying our definition to particular cases consists merely in 
stating plain questions. For an instance. Is the power of 
the president to influence the popular representatives, or the 
power of the government to neglect the militia, and use 
standing armies, good or evil, monarchical or republican, or 
congenial with the policy of the United States or of Eng- 
land, or of both ? Is the policy of these countries the 
same? 



[ 2*4 ] 



SECTION THE FOURTH. 



FUNDING. 



JLn a former part of this essay, a promise was made to con- 
sider the effects of funding and hanking, in relation to the 
principles and policy of the United States ; that promise 
shall now be complied with. 

No form of civil government can be more fraudulent, 
expensive and complicated, than one which distributes 
wealth and consequently power, by the act of the govern- 
ment itself. A few men wish to gratify their own avarice and 
ambition. They cannot effect this without accomplices, 
and they gain them by corrupting the legislature. Still 
the faction is too feeble to oppress a nation. Vice looks 
for defence, because it expects punishment. The legisla- 
ture must corrupt a party in the nation, and this is effected 
by the modern invention called a paper system, with a de- 
gree of plausibility and dispatch, infinitely exceeding any 
ancient contrivance. Executive patronage corrupts indi- 
viduals ; legislative, factions ; the first by office and sala 
ry ; the second by law charter and seperate interest. Fear 
and avarice combine to secure implicit obedience from these 
purchased engines of power, and an inexorable fulfilment of 
the corrupter's purpose. Accordingly, a paper system will 
cling to a government, as closely as an army to a general, 
or a hierarchy to a pope. 

An executive power to bestow offices and contracts up- 
on members of a legislature, resembles the idea of procur- 
ing talents, and rewarding merit ; but a legislative power 
to buy a faction by loans and charters, cannot crouch behind 
this subterfuge ; it literally displays, and openly practises 



FUNDING. 2i& 

the same species of corruption, which executive patronage 
endeavours to hide. 

A paper system belongs to the species of patronag© 
which we have called legislative. It is introduced upon 
various pretexts ; hut its true ends are simple. These are 
to enrich individuals, and at the national expense, to cor- 
rupt a faction, which will adhere to a government against a 
nation. Such a system may subsist in union with election, 
but the principles of our policy cannot subsist in union with 
such a system. 

Its practicability in union with election is ascertained in 
England, and by widening the distance between individuals 
in wealth, it has detached the mass of talents from the ser- 
vice of the publick, to the service of a faction ; and chang- 
ed election from a shield for liberty, into a keen and polish- 
ed instrument for her destruction. This abuse is a refine- 
ment upon a late quotation emphatically proving, that the 
system of balancing or checking monarchy in England, is 
capable of producing more tyranny and oppression, than 
simple or pure monarchy would dare to attempt. A mo- 
narch, shielded by a corrupt parliament, may adventure up- 
on measures, which he would otherwise shrink from. And 
a legislature, shielded by a paper faction, may adventure 
upon measures which they would otherwise shrink from. 
Election is made the instrument of legislative patronage, 
and a nation seems to be (he author of its own ruin, whilst 
that ruin proceeds from the operation of a paper system, 
corrupting talents, enriching a faction, and impoverishing 
the mass of the nation ; yeA the people will be kept patient 
by election itself, from an erroneous opinion, that the gov- 
ernment is administered according to their will. Against 
this species of tyranny there is no remedy, except tjaat of 
preventing its cause, as the people have no mode of discov- 
ering the individuals corrupted by. legislative patronage ; 
other forms of tyranny are seen in the persons of kings, no- 
bles and priests; executive sinecure and patronage, are 
visible ; and a visible enemy may be subdued ; but an in- 
visible enemy cannot ever be assailed. 



2 3b 6 FUXDItfG. 

The possibility of that species of tyranny, arising from 
an union between an elective legislature, and an interest 
different from the national interest, was contemplated by 
all our constitutions ; and the whole fund of foresight then 
existing brought to bear against it. For this precise end, 
innumerable precautions were used, to subject law-makers 
to the national will; to prevent them from getting wealth 
from the nation by their own laws ; and to expose them 
equally with other citizens, to oppressive laws. But all 
these precautions are destroyed by the legal inventions of 
funding, banking and charter, more effectually than the 
liberty of the press was destroyed by a sedition law. The 
reader will not require a catalogue of cases, to prove how 
deeply laws can wound constitutions, after this reference 
has awakened his recollection. 

Admitting that the power of creating debt, must neces- 
sarily reside in a government, yet, next to the power of 
raising armies, it is the most dangerous with which it can 
be invested. Mankind may be governed by money or arms. 
Both these powers admit of checks, and required them, as 
being more dangerous than any others. An armed nation 
would have been a check upon the one ; and an effectual 
exclusion from the legislature, of any participation in the 
profits of debt, created by funding or banking, would have 
been a cheek upon the other. 

But a borrowing power itself is rendered questionable, 
hy considering its origin and effects. We possess a cor- 
rect history of two paper systems only ; those of England 
and America. The first was produced by the personal ha- 
tred of William of Orange for Lewis the 14th, the rapacity 
of Marlborough and Eugene, and the need of a disputed ti- 
tle to a crown, for partisans. The second also followed a 
revolution, without having contributed towards it ; compen- 
sated publiek services by the tax of appreciation, after they 
had paid that of depreciation ; and transferred much of the 
reward for which an army bled in defence of their country, 
to those who had ^hed that blood. To gratify a Ling's 



hatred, enrich rapacious generals, and transfer a crown 
from one family to another, were ends of the English fund- 
ing system, not much more just or useful, than those expe- 
rienced here. This system or policy, therefore, has very lit- 
tle to boast of for its exploits in these two eminent cases. 

But there is a theory in favour of funding systems, art- 
fully suggested to cover their practical evils. Nations are 
persuaded that they can anticipate the riches of posterity 
and bequeath it their misfortunes ; seduced by this glitter- 
ing temptation, they have forborne to look through its gild- 
ing, in order to discover what it conceals. 

Could one generation thus have plundered wealth and 
leisure from another, each would have preferred certain vic- 
tories costing neither blood nor money, to murderous, pre- 
carious, and expensive wars ; and though the wisdom and 
justice of the Deify might have been rendered questiona- 
ble, by the subjection of unborn innocence to the tyranny of 
existing vice, yet the crime would have been perpetrated ia 
security, and the magnitude of the acquisition would have 
varnished over its flagitiousness, in the eyes of the perpe- 
trators. 

The propensity of nations to molest their contempora- 
ries for the sake of wealth, is recorded in innumerable ex- 
amples ; and as the same passion would with additional 
strength have incited them to invade the rights of the un- 
born, an existing generation would have wanted motives for 
self-molestation, if these motives could have been appeased 
by calling forward into their own pockets the inexhaustible 
wealth of time to come. It is therefore probable that such 
an operation is physically impossible, because the treasures 
of anticipation have not suspended for a moment the dispo- 
sition of existing nations to plunder and oppress each other, 
or of existing governments to plunder and oppress the people. 

But an opinion that it is possible, for the present gene- 
ration to seize and use the property of future generations, 
has produced to both the parties concerned, eiFects of the 
same complexion with the usual fruits of nationn! erronr. 



248 m7§mm&. 

The present age is cajoled to tax and enslave itself, by f!it> 
errour of belleviHg that it taxes and enslaves future ages to 
enrich itself; and future ages submit to taxation and slave- 
ry, by being seduced into an erroneous opinion, that the pre* 
sent age have a right to inflict upon them these calamities. 

It is to such national errours, that mankind have been 
indebted for most of their miseries, an*' for having fallen a 
prey to avarice and ambition in all ages of the world. Idol- 
atry was concealed behind an erroneous veneration for those 
who fed upon its victims. Monarchy and aristocracy are 
skilfully fenced round by the insidious and erroneous argu- 
ments of the mass of talents, interested in their cause. Cru- 
sades, in the opinion of several generations, led the way to 
Heaven, whilst the monks used them to acquire wealth. 
And the erronrof an opinion, that one age can seize upon 
the wealth of another by anticipation, is no less ruinous to 
nations, and enriching to individuals and orders or seperate 
interests, than the errours which have supported idolatry, 
monarchy, aristocracy and crusades. 

It is however the most recent, the most plausible, the 
most seducing, and tha most dangerous invention, to whs* h 
self interest and cunning has ever resorted, for moulding 
man into coin ; and will probably keep its ground, until 
such calamities as have exploded other errours, shall dis- 
close to an existing generation that it was born free. A 
truth, which they will then clearly discern to have been re- 
vealed to man, in withholding from the dead a power to gov- 
ern the living, and from the living, a power to govern the 
dead. It will then be seen, that moral rectitude does not 
impose upon a living nation the duty of submitting to tyran- 
ny and oppression, because a nation, which is dead, chose to 
gratify the hatred of one king against another, or the ra- 
pacity of generals ; or to corrupt a party to support or 
produce a revolution in the government. Evils, controlled 
by such an opinion, and encouraged by one, that posterity 
ought to suffer their effects, rather than the generation 
which caused them. 



It would be superfluous to prove that unborn generations 
are injured by anticipation; it is taxation, by persons, not 
elected by the payers, nor participating in the tax, but en- 
riched by it. If the laws of nature are so partial and un~ 
just, as to allow one generation to rob another with impuni- 
ty, the crime will be perpetrated. It will only be prevent- 
ed by a conviction that punishment follows vice, in this as 
in other cases ; and that the malice of the attempt regular- 
ly receives its due vengeance, without a possibility of ob- 
taining a benefit ; or by the same disregard of the living to 
the mandates of the dead, as to the happiness and liberty 
of the unborn. 

ILet us consider how anticipation bestows wealth. It 
does not conjure into real existence, the commercial, agri- 
cultural or manufaetural products of futurity. It does not 
add to the corn or to the coin. It only conjures the wealth of 
existing people out of some hands into others ; and the cre- 
dit with which to buy property of the living given hj the 
certificate, constitutes all the solid wealth gained by antici- 
pation. It is a pretext for taxation, and a mode of chang- 
ing property among individuals, but produces nothing for 
nations. 

War is among the most plausible means used to delude 
a' nation into the errour of anticipation. Yet it cannot bring 
up from futurity a gun, a soldier, a ration, or a cartridge. 
The present generation suffers every hardship and cost of 
war, although anticipation pretends that it is suffered by 
future generations. And this delusion is used to involve na- 
tions in wars, which they would never commence, if they 
knew that all the expense would fall upon themselves. It 
is twice suffered ; by the living, who supply all the ex- 
penses of war; and by the unborn, who supply an equiva- 
lent sum, to take up certificates of the expenses paid by the 
living. 

No item of the expense of war is more transferable from 
the living to the unborn, than the blood it sheds. Money 
buys this blood and every other expense of war ; but it is 

33 



%B0. FUNDrrce. 

neither blood nor bread, and only a collector of them. 
These realities, not the signs or tokens, supply the war; 
and after they are expended, their shadows are made by 
anticipation, to consume the same amount of realities which 
the war devoured, even that of human life, if death by op- 
pression is equivalent to death by the sword. Thus one 
war is converted into two, and every period of natural, be- 
gets an equal period of artificial war. The same ingenious 
contrivance, by the help of compound anticipation, converts 
about fourteen years of war, into a perpetual war. If a 
million annually comprises or represents the utmost efforts 
in realities, which a nation can make in war; and the re- 
alities represented are expended annually, leaving behind 
them annually the million of stock or certificates at com- 
pound interest, produced by the anticipating mode of calling 
these realities into use ; then a war of about fourteen years 
continuance, places the nation in a state equivalent to per- 
petual war ; because the stock or certificates will devour in 
peace, precisely the same amount of the realities represent- 
ed by money, which the war did. Nor can this nation be 
ever relieved from a state equivalent to perpetual war, 
whilst the stock preserves its value, and the national re- 
sources are the same. If there are fourteen intervals be- 
tween the fourteen years of war, the same result will ulti- 
mately occur; whence it has happened, that peace has been 
seldom able to repair the errour in a mode of making 
war, so calamitous as to double the duration of short ones, 
and to produce a perpetuity of its evils in the space of 
fourteen years. A maniac, whose income in kind is just 
sufficient to support him, takes it into his head to give his 
bonds to sundry people annually for its value, whilst he is 
consuming it. At the end of fourteen years his whole in- 
come is gone, though he has only expended its annual 
amount. Such is anticipation to nations. But those who 
use it to deceive, plunder and enslave them, artfully liken 
it to the cases of a man who buys an estate on credit, or 
who gives bonds to himself. One would think that the 



FUNDING. 25i 

impossibility of finding any such estate thus obtained by na- 
tions ; and the possibility of finding the taxes, the poverty, 
the splendour, and the political innovations it produces, 
Would detect the falsehood of these pretended resemblances | 
and sufficiently convince nations that they are not one homo- 
geneous mass of matter, but capable of a thorough divisi- 
bility into individuals, and into a multitude of separate in- 
terests (such as payers and receivers, masters and slaves, 
impostors and dupes) to disclose to them the folly of trans- 
forming themselves into the resemblance of the maniac* 

But the fact is, that nations are seldom allowed to look 
at their interest except as it is reflected by living political 
mirrors, such as kings, ministers, demagogues or stockjob- 
bers, so contrived as to make deformity exhibit beauty, and 
poverty wealth, to the infatuated people, for the sake of ad- 
vancing their own views and projects. Had the represen- 
tations of these false mirrors been true, all nations would 
have enjoyed the highest prosperity. The United States 
are tempted to plunge into anticipation by the funds of 
back lands and growing population ; the first pronounced by 
twenty years experience, to be insufficient for the suste- 
nance of a single Baring $P and the second unable to pro- 
tect the existing generation for a single year, against the 
drafts from their liberty and property which the system in- 
evitably produces. If we are thus seduced into the snare, 
in which the ambitious and mercenary of the present age 
involve their prey, our population and lands, are destined to 
feed the two most insatiable and worst passions which af- 
flict mankind, and our vacant territory will only be a fund 
for enslaving our children. 

Anticipation is at best a mode of putting the energies of 
present time in motion, without any powers of calling up a 
single energy of future time. Other modes have operated 
more powerfully, without being considered as blessings to 
the age which felt them. Those by "'which Xerxes, Alex 
ander, Cresar, Peter the hermit, Tamerlane. Cromwell and 

* A rich English stockjobber. 



252 FTJNDItfG. 

Bonaparte were enabled to lead millions to victory or de- 
feat, were more successful in arousing the military ener- 
gies of the present time? than the anticipating mode. 

Nothing exposed the American and French revolutions 
to greater danger, than the attempts to use this delusion. 
Anticipation was tried, it taxed the existing generations by 
depreciation, it superseded the cultivation of other modes of 
putting existing energies in motion, it failed, the failure al- 
most obliterated the memory and suspended the use, of the 
real means of war, and a dangerous crisis in both cases was 
produced. The errour in these instances was surmounted 
by the good sense which necessity so often teaches. 

Political and religious opinion, and a love of country, 
are stronger excitements of existing warlike energies, than 
anticipation. They cannot be stolen or hoarded ; but war 
carried on by paper, is starved by peculation, and produces 
the utmost degree of publick expense, with the least degree 
of publick spirit An excitement of the militia of the 
United States by arms, training, equipments and eulogy, 
would probably have created a stronger military force, at 
an inferior expense, than all the efforts of anticipation have 
been able to produce. Can the most expensive, the least 
successful, and sthe most corrupt mode of exciting the ener- 
gies of war, be the best ? 

If anticipation cannot create, but only excite, it follows* 
that there is a deception in the idea, that it can postpone the 
expense of war to a future time. The expense of war real- 
ly consists of men, food, raiment, arms and ammunition, and 
not in a juggle of signs ; anticipation therefore is a phan- 
tom, incapable of alleviating the miseries of war, whilst it 
is a harpy, able to devour the blessings of peace. 

The Romans carried on long and expensive wars with- 
out the aid of anticipation, and it failed before the end of 
our short and cheap revolutionary war. Yet the whole of 
the paper money was paid, or sunk by depreciation whilst 
the war was going on ; a mode of taxation so excessively 
unequal* as to ascertain, both the ability and necessity of 



FUNDING* 356 

every existing nation to bear the expense of its own war ; 
for if war could be maintained by a tax excessively unequal, 
it follows, that the energies of war, are within the reach of 
an equal tax. 

After this unequal tax was paid by the United States, 
aud the war had been finished successfully by patriotism 
and bravery, anticipation, which had fled disgracefully from 
the contest, returned to reap the best fruits of the victory ; 
and though a traitor, found means to supplant and plunder 
the heroes who had won it. This success was more won- 
derful, from the reason which caused it, than in itself, That 
a few people should be willing to enrich themselves at the 
expense of a multitude, is far less wonderful, than that 
they should succeed by persuading this multitude, that an- 
ticipation, which had recently deserted them, was a better 
defender of nations, than patriotism and bravery, which had 
recently saved them. 

National defence, was never the true cause of any fund- 
ing system : and no funding system ever defended a nation. 
It was invented in England to prop a revolution hj corrup- 
tion ; extensively used to sacrifice the nation to German in- 
terests ; and it has been continued to feed avarice, and si- 
lently to revolutionize the revolution. It was introduced 
into America, after the nation had been defended, to enrich 
a few individuals, and also to revolutionize the revolution. 

In England, the advancement of the Hanoverian family 
to the throne, was disagreeable to the landed interest, of 
which the tory party at that time chiefly consisted. This 
compelled George the first to use the whig party. And 
Sir Robert Walpole, who belonged to it, pushed a paper 
system to enrich his partisans, and to balance the superior 
wealth of their political opponents. The artifice complete- 
ly succeeded ; the rich tories were impoverished ; a vast 
change of wealth took place;* an irresistible whig party 

* There is only one title in England which g*oes with the lands ; that of 
K run del. Did Henry the 7th or Walpole's paper system, operate most ef- 
Actually towards this circumstance ? 



35-i FUNTHX6. 

was formed, and gradually transformed by the same paper 
3ystem into tories. Asa whig party it placed a family on 
the throne, and then converged itself to toryism with zeal 
and rapidity, by fraudulent laws to enrich itself. 

In America also, a paper system followed the revolution 
produced by the present form of our general government, 
and operated upon the landed whigs here, exactly as it had 
'lone on the landed tories in England. It taxes them, en- 
riches a credit or paper faction \ changes property ; forms 
a party ; and transforms its principles as in England. But 
the American whigs are blind to the ruin which the English 
tories saw. 

Henry the 7th broke the power of the barons to strength- 
en the monarchy ; Sir Robert Walpole destroyed the power 
of the landed interest, and compelled it to contribute to the 
formation of a monied interest, to establish a disputed title 
to the throne. The capacity of the latter invention has pro- 
bably exceeded what was foreseen. It is found able to 
seize and to hold the reins of government. It is found able 
to erect a stupendous fabrick of factitious wealth, and to com- 
pel land and labour or real wealth, to become its humble 
'^nd obedient subject. 

The importance of these truths is not diminished, be- 
cause the monied interest in England happened to start as 
whigs, and the landed as tories. They shew that a paper 
system was not introduced for national defence, and that it 
can transfer property, transform parties, and change the 
nature of governments. Avarice, and a conviction of its 
power as a political engine, suggested its introduction ; and 
events have proved that this conviction was correct. It is 
an engine which is able to usurp and hold a government ; 
therefore it will contend for dominion. As it will contend, 
it must experience defeat or victory. It is also an engine 
having no resemblance in interest to land, labour or talents; 
therefore it cannot be a friend to either. 

It was necessary to premise a short history of these two 
paper systems, to introduce the following argument, as to 



the reality or delusion of an idea usually annexed to antici- 
pation. If it did not powerfully and instantaneously enrich 
and impoverish existing people, how could Walpole so sud- 
denly and effectually have debased a landed, and exalted a 
monied faction, by its means ? The capacity of anticipa- 
tion to act suddenly upon an existing age, manifests both 
the delusion of considering it as an engine for drawing up 
wealth from futurity, and also, that as an engine for pro 
ducing an oppressive government, it is no delusion. All 
paper systems, are in fact, indirect laws of confiscation, used 
for the purposes which induced the French revolutionists 
to transfer more directly, a great mass of landed property 
from their antagonists to themselves. These purposes sim- 
ply were to enrich themselves and establish their power. It 
was to enrich, and establish the power of the whigs, at the 
expense of the tories, that Walpole used a paper system. In 
America, a paper confiscation system, conferred wealth and 
power on a monarchical party at the expense of the whigs. 
In both countries, those who furnished the riches, lost 
much of their power and property ; and those who received 
them, gained it. The French confiscations went boldly to 
their object, like a direct tax. The English and American 
confiscations, secretly and circuitously effected their design* 
by the complication of a paper system ; like an indirect tax. 
One seized and transferred the land itself. The others, 
mortgaged it ; artfully leaving to the owner an appearance 
*>f property, whilst he is only a receiver of the profits for 
the benefit of the mortgagee. Is one mode of confiscation 
reprobated, because it is an open robber, which quickly ends 
the pain of its victim; and the other suffered, because it. 
lies hidden under deceit and complexity, and inflicts slow and 
lasting tortures ? Oris one reprobated, like a small crimi- 
nal who robs an individual; and the other flattered, like a 
great one who plunders a nation ? Can violations of pri- 
vate property be rendered just or unjust by their modes ? 
Between the modes we have been comparing, there is one 
difference. Direct confiscation is always pretended to be 



.356 FVND.CTG. 

a punishment of guilty indirect, by paper systems, is only 
used to punish innocence. And yet these indirect eonfisea* 
tions talk finely about forfeitures, and private property ; 
they pretend to protect that which their only effect is to 
transfer; they pretend to reprobate that which is their 
own quality; just as a tyrant, m the midst of spoil and car- 
nage, will boast of his justice and clemency. 

The appearance of anticipating the resources of future 
ages, is artfully extracted from the simple idea of borrow- 
ing upon interest, to raise up for paper systems a sufficient 
degree of popularity to support the craft. If the interest, 
which is the price paid for a loan, is adequate to the value 
of its use, that use is sold and bought, and not loaned. And 
such must be the ease, as the interest or price is taken or 
refused at the option of the lender. A nominal borrower is 
therefore a real purchaser of this use at value, which value 
he must pay as long as he holds the purchase ; nor does he 
by the purchase of money for interest, differ from a tenant 
who purchases land for rent, in point of being able to an- 
ticipate the wealth of futurity. A new tenant or a new 
generation may succeed the old, and each may continue to 
pay the same rent for the land or money, but their predeces- 
sors paid it also, without getting any thing out of time to 
come. This observation applies with still more particular 
accuracy to funding systems, in that branch of their policy, 
never to redeem the principal, but to receive a perpetual 
rent for it. 

An individual who borrows money, like one who rents 
land, does not bring forward for his own use, the least por- 
tion of the wealth of time to come. Could he do this, bor- 
rowing would make an existing individual wealthier ; but as 
it generally makes him poorer, it seems evident, that he 
pays himself the value of the use of the money he borrows* 
If A, having land worth ten thousand pounds, borrows that 
sum of B s A does not become worth twenty thousand pounds 
at the expense of his posterity. He has only sold his land 
io B, and turned his fortune into msney ; but B indulges A 



FURDINtt. . 237 

#ith cultivating the land, and paying its rent under the name 
of interest. So if a nation, whose lands are worth one hun- 
dred millions, borrows and funds that sum, it has only sold 
or mortgaged its lands to stockholders up to their value* 
who receive the rent in the name also of interest or divi- 
dends. It has not added to its wealth, or drawn any thing 
from futurity, but only turned its land into money. And 
between the uation and a private debtor is this difference ; 
that an individual who sells his estate, receives and uses the 
purchase- money ; but a nation which turns its estate or mry 
portion of it into money by borrowing, loses both the money 
and estate. 

But the evil is not terminated with this loss. If an age 
is supposed to consist of twenty years, and it borrows at five 
per centum, it loses the principal, first by its perversion 
from publick use to the gratification of private avarice or 
ambition; secondly, by its entire repayment during the bor- 
rowing age ; and moreover all individuals who exist above 
twenty years, pay their proportion of the principal borrow- 
ed for each cycle of additional existence. Many will pay 
three hundred per centum for anticipation in this way .only, 
but few will receive any thing from it, and all subject their 
descendants for ever to a repayment of the whole principal 
for every revolution of the stockjobbing orb, without a pos- 
sibility of their deriving any benefit from it. To these re- 
quitals of an existing generation, for attempting the impos- 
sibility of enriching itself at the expense of its posterity, a 
long catalogue of the same complexion might he added ; 
such as the number and expense of new offices, produced by 
borrowing, not only to expend the principal, but to collect 
and pay the interest; and the oppression inevitably result- 
ing from dividing a nation into inimical interests. These 
arguments are bottomed upon the concession of a similitude 
between renting land and borrowing money, whereas the 
true similitude from which we ought to draw our conclu- 
sion? in regard to funding system^ would be one [ictvveea 

3-+ 



258 VUKDINCf, 

paying rent fop the picture of land, and interest for the pic- 
ture of money. 

If the borrowing age, far from enriching itself, is a suf- 
ferer ,* a system, by which each succeeding age, undergoes 
the same or greater evils, must be vitally malignant to hu- 
man happiness. 

We have been unable to deduce any paper system, from 
the origin of honest intention or national defence ; but as 
such an origin, would not alter its effects upon human hap- 
piness or liberty, or upon the civil policy of the United 
States, it is fair to conclude, that as the effects #f funding 
or anticipation will be evil, though the motives which gave 
rise to it should be honest, so the system is incurably er- 
roneous, even under its most upright application. 

Of our civil policy, division and responsibility, are the 
chief pillars. An accumulation of wealth by law, is the 
counter principle to that of division. And out of this ac- 
cumulation will grow an influence over the legislature, 
which will secretly deprive the people of their influence 
over it. 

This principle of division has been applied to the laws of 
inheritance in every state in the union ; to divide land and 
accumulate stock, exhibits a political phenomenon, worthy 
of an attentive consideration ; because its consequences 
must be new and curious. If an accumulation of landed 
wealth, by the narrow and limited efforts of talents and in- 
dustry, is an object of jealousy to our policy : an accumu- 
lation of paper wealth by the extensive power of law, can- 
not be an object of its approbation. Land is in some degree 
a representative of every man's interest, as being the source 
of human subsistence, and a landed interest cannot tax with- 
out taxing itself. Out of paper stock nothing grows. It 
only represents the interest of its holder, and it can tax, 
without taxing itself. It must do this, because it can only 
subsist upon the subsistence it can draw from land and la- 
bour ; and as an imposer of taxes it is strictly analogous to 
a legislature af officers receiving legal salaries. If a landed 



FUNDING* 25*9 

interest, though naturally friendly to man, may be cor- 
rupted by moulding it into a separate order ; and rendered 
malignant and oppressive in a considerable degree ; it is ex- 
tremely improbable, that a paper, stock, or taxation inte- 
rest, can be changed from a foe into a friend, by the means 
which convert a friend into a foe. The English have paid 
some regard to their principles of checks and balances, by 
leaving primogeniture, or an hereditary landed political or- 
der or faction, standing, as an offset against their monied 
faction ; the American legislatures have paid no regard to 
their principles of division and responsibility, and more en- 
tirely partial to a monied faction, of their own architecture, 
have destroyed this offset, alone capable of holding a monied 
faction in some state of responsibility ; and secured agri- 
cultural subjection to tiieir offspring, by charters for accu- 
Ululating one, and laws for dividing the other. 

It is a plausible consideration against this conclusion* 
that the laws of distribution reach and scatter paper wealths 
as laws of inheritance do landed. The following fact, set- 
tled by experience, is a conclusive answer to the objection. 
The English laws of distribution, by which paper wealth is 
divided upon principles similar to our laws of distribution, 
have been unable to prevent the. existence of a separate, 
stock, paper, or taxation interest, or the ruinous effects of 
that existence. 

Such is the fact ; let us search for its cause. It pre- 
sents itself in the consideration, that corporations, or facti- 
tious separate interests, neither live nor die naturally 5 they 
only live or die by law. An established church for instance* 
is a factitious separate interest, not of natural, but of legal 
origin, and by law only can its existence be terminated. 
By increasing the number of priests, and dividing the in- 
come of this separate interest among more members, the 
interest itself is not divided^ and instead of being weaken 
ed, it is strengthened. So in a separate, stock, paper oi 
taxation interest of any kind established by law. It is an 
Merest one and indivisible $ and though the laws of distil- 



260 FUNMNG. 

btition may occasionally add to the numbers benefitted by it, 
tiiese additions are recruits similar to new levies added to 
an army, or new priests added to an established church. In 
all three of these cases, an interest, created by law, and sub* 
sisting upon a nation, becomes stronger, by multiplying the 
individuals united to it with a participation in its income ; 
and weaker, by diminishing the number of these individuals* 
Such interests are incapable, as will presently be proved, of 
including the majority of a nation, or of a general division 
among its members ; the cement of fear, excited by a per- 
petual danger of the stroke of death, from their creator, 
law; and a consciousness of physical imbecility, distinguish 
them fj*om the object of their apprehensions. 

None of these causes will prevent a landed interest from 
being weakened by a division of lands. Land is not created 
by law : therefore it is under no apprehension of its death 
stroke from law. It does not subsist upon other interests $ 
therefore it is not beset by an host of enemies, whose ven- 
geance it is conscious of deserving. By the operation of 
iaws adverse to its monopoly, it quickly adjusts itself to the 
interest of a majority of a nation 5 thenceforward it is in- 
capable of the avarice and injustice of a factitious legal in- 
terest, because no temptation to seduce it into either, ex- 
ists. To this point of improvement, a landed interest will 
invariably be brought, by laws for dividing lnnds ; nor can 
it be corrupted, except by 4 laws which confine lands to a 
minority. Then it becomes in a degree a factitious legal 
monopoly, capable of being favoured by law, and infected 
with a portion of that malignity, which constitutes the entire 
essence of a minor separate interest purely factitious. 

xl paper, a military, or an established church interest, 
cannot, it has been asserted, include a majority of a nation, 
as may a landed ; because a majority cannot live upon a 
minority, but a majority may live upon land. Let us take 
it paper interest of any kind to illustrate this assertion. It 
is simply debt, in all its forms. If I give a bond to myself, 
it does not add to my wealth* **v ereate a new interest, If 



[FUNDING* 361 

a nation should create any portion of debt, and sustain it in 
a state of equal distribution among, all its members, no se- 
parate interest would thence arise. , Creditor and debtor 
are characters essentia! to the existence of a paper property 
or iaterest ; if these characters arc united, the quality of 
value iiees from paper. Imagine a nation consisting of one 
million, having paper sfocl* of one million, each peisei* lidd- 
ing one share, and equally taxed to redeem this stock. The 
principle of division obviously annihilates in Ibis stock, the 
quality of value or property. But give ten shares each, to 
one hundred thousand of the same nation, and these quali- 
ties are instantly annexed to the stock. But land neither 
loses its value by division, nor is that value enhanced by ae«- 
cumulation. It is therefore capable of escaping the infec- 
tion of monopoly, whilst a paper interest cannot exist with- 
out it; of this interest, monopoly being the vital principle, 
the laws of distribution cannot destroy it, without putting an 
end to the system itself. 

The gradual progress of the laws of distribution, must 
aggravate the evil of a paper monopoly, until the very mo- 
ment at which they might be made to produce its destruc- 
tion. As a paper interest draws its subsistence front the re- 
sidue-of a nation, an increase of the number to be subsisted, 
will add to the burden of furnishing this subsistence; just 
as an increase of soldiers or priests, will add to the burdens 
of the nation which maintains them. So long as the in- 
crease of an army or priesthood is attended with 'national 
ability to maintain them, the eifect of bringing more sol- 
diers or more priests to share in a religious or military mo- 
nopoly, is an aggravation of national oppression ; but Uiq 
very instant a distribution of a religious or military monopo- 
ly is extended to a majority of the nation, by making (hem 
soldiers or priests (as in the case of a national militia) the 
ability in the residue to maintain it would cease, and with It, 
tfre oppression would cease also. In like manner, the la ms 
If distribution are only capable of affecting a paper interest. 
' o modes. By aggravating its mischief, or modi; 



362 FUNDING, 

its destruction. And they must of necessity operate in the 
first way, unti] they terminate in the second. Their first 
effect is certain, and must continue for a long space, to pro- 
duce a chance for the second ; and it is after all highly im- 
probable, that the second will ever happen. 

The laws of distribution therefore aggravate the evils of 
a paper monopoly, whereas those for dividing lands diminish 
the evils of a landed monopoly. The fact in England and 
the United States, exactly corresponds with these argu- 
ments. The distribution of a paper interest to greater 
nunbers, has strengthened the paper monopoly in both 
countries. A landed monopoly in England, though sup- 
ported by the law of primogeniture and a legislative order, 
is hardly felt as a politieal principle. There, the mere 
right of alienation has produced a division of lands, suffi- 
cient to destroy a landed aristocracy, and enfeeble a landed 
interest ; and laws for dividing or distributing paper stock* 
have created and strengthened a paper aristocracy. The 
latter have the same effect as laws for multiplying offices? 
in order to cure the ill effects of patronage ; or for increas- 
ing a nobility or clergy for the purpose of abolishing an or- 
der. 

Having proved that laws of division or distribution, will 
counteract landed and aid paper combinations for usurping 
a government; we will proceed to subjoin a few of the ef- 
fects which will result from the destruction of a landed? 
and the creation of a paper monopoly. 

As landed possessions are divided, the leisure and in- 
come of the proprietors will be diminished; and -as paper 
property is accumulated, the leisure and income of the 
holders will be increased. The weight of talents will fol- 
low leisure and wealth ; and these will gradually acquire a 
locality, corresponding to the abodes of the receivers of 
stock taxation. This superiority of talents and wealth will 
invest individuals, and the cities in which they will chiefly 
reside, with an influence, well calculated to acquire an as- 
cendaut over the lauded interest, gradually impoverished by 



division. And though this landed interest may not sudden- 
ly sink into an ignorant, scattered, disunited peasantry, 
taxed by paper operations, to enrich, instruct and elevate a 
sew species of feudal capitalists, yet the tendency of the 
system is exactly to that point, and the arrival of an unob- 
structed tendency, is inevitable. 

If the division of landed property has a tendency to in- 
crease the ignorance of the numerous and valuable portion 
of society which cultivate it, a defect of the American po- 
licy in not providing some remedy to meet this evil, is dis- 
closed. From preventing an accumulation of landed wealth, 
and providing for a monied or stock monopoly of know- 
ledge, a reason arises for placing the best educations within 
the reach of that great mass of people, called the landed in- 
terest ; instead of which its inability to purchase knowledge 
is studiously increased, by a division of inheritances, and by 
the annual draughts upon it for the interest and dividends of 
debt and bank stock. The ignorance of land holders will 
thus in time be brought to a standard exactly sufficient to 
render them tame, and subservient to the interest of a stock 
aristocracy ; an event which may even be accelerated, by 
taxing them for the purpose of diffusing a knowledge of the 
vulgar tongue, and vulgar arithmetick. These laws for di- 
viding landed property, and levelling landed knowledge, 
form a striking eo?Urast with those for accumulating stock 
wealth, and of course stock knowledge. Are both consist- 
ent with the principles of our governments ? If I wished to 
level a field, merely preserving that degree of inequality, 
necessary to prevent the effects of stagnation, ought I to rear 
a mountain in the midst of it ? Is an accumulation of 
wealth and knowledge by law in a few hands, to be found in 
any recipe for making a free republick ? 

1 The errour of landed wealth, in favouring a paper aris- 
tocracy, because it is friendly to a landed one, rises into 
view at this moment. It does not perceive that even in 
England, a landed aristocracy has been vanquished and is 
governed by a paper or stock aristocracy. It doe? not per 



eeive that a tended aristocracy cannot exist, imder our laws, 
the extent \)f our country, and the multitude of proprietors ; 
majority is not a quality of aristocracy. And it will not 
perceive that the landed interest is under our circumstances, 
ii retnc j vably republican. Being so, the preservation of 
principles adapted to its nature, or a sale or mortgage of 
itself for the maintenance of a stock aristocracy, is evi- 
dently ifcs ^ulitiiry alternative. Our landed interest is inca- 
pable of forming the aristocracy required by Mr. Adams's 
system of limited monarchy. In England, the aristocr.at.i- 
Cftl power which now props the throne, is compounded of 
arms, paper and patronage : not of the landed interest. 
Will a paper system, which has destroyed tha power of a 
landed interest in England, revive it here ? lias a landed 
aristocracy existed, or can it exist, in community with 
alienations, commerce, the division of inheritances, and the 
absence of perpetuities ? 

Perhaps an imaginary apprehension may have suggested 
the idea, that the mode by which Walnole fixed a tottering 
throne, was necessary for the establishment of our union. 
But such an idea is a traitor to that union. Principles can 
.never be established by their contraries. Monarchy may 
corrupt a Taction to support itself, consistently with its prin- 
ciples ; but national will cannot corrupt a faction to guide 
national will, without perishing at the instant of success. 
Had the proposal been made, it would have been reprobated 
hy every individual friendly to the union. Is the attempt 
less to be reprobated, than the proposal? 

The English have been made to pay hundreds of mil- 
lions for the Hanover family; but why should the Ameri- 
cans buy the union at the same price, of any party, whether 
whig or tory ? No one has a claim to it, as Stuart had to 
the throne of England, therefore we can keep it as our own 
undisputed right. It may be retained by virtue, moderate 
government, and easy taxes ; but it dies under the infiuence 
of paper stock. And out of this dissolution the resurrection 
of Mr Adam s' s theory of three orders cannot arise. There 



$ UNITING. 5tic 

Win \m but two under the system of paper, namely, creditor 
and debtor, patricians and plebeians, or masters and slave?. 
We agree with Mr. Adams that two orders will render a 
nation miserable, though we have denied that three, or even 
a number equal to the casts of India, will restore it to hap- 
piness. 

The orders of creditor and debtor, make Use system of 
Spartans and Helots. One will live in idleness upon the 
labour* of the other. But the luxury of the present age, and 
the effeminacy of modern Spartans, doubly aggravate the 
malignity of the theory in our imitation. Infinitely more 
income is required for the paper Spartans, and labour f rem 
the free Helofs, without the retribution of national defence. 
But if our modern Spartans are not heroes, they have dis- 
closed an inimitable portion of dexterity, in x prevailing upon 
the order of Helots to buy heroes to knock their fetters on 
and not off; and to defend, not the nation, but the income 
of the Spartan order. 

It is believed by the intelligent writer of the life of 
General Washington, that the United States were divided 
into two parties and brought to the brink of ruin, soon after 
the peace with England, by the struggles of creditors and 
debtors. If he is right, it cannot be just or wise to create 
by legal artifice the two characters to an extent, beyond 
that which then threatened them with ruin. Paper stock 
forces every individual into one of these parties, without 
leaving in the nation a single disinterested umpire, to as- 
suage jthe passions inspired by a belief, that we have a right 
to receive what the law gives, and a right to withhold what 
it unjustly transfers. These will not be the parties of pri-s 
Tate contract, restrained by the voice of conscience, and 
moderated by the decrees of impartiality ; but of fluctuating 
interested faction, legislating to get or to keep wealth, ana 
looking only into its own law for justice and judgement. 

Paper stock, patronage, and sinecure, profess an nifec- 
tion for commerce, because she is a convenient 
tackle, totfHvw 'out of 'la n& and labour, the money * 



3GC FUNDING. 

bestows on them wealth and power. For this purpose has 
English commerce been used, by paper stock, patronage and 
sinecure, and the maritime force necessary to sustain, is ae 
evidence of their latent hostility towards it. 

Dazzled by the splendour of English commerce; shall 
we forget that we cannot conquer and keep both the Indies* 
nor compel the world to obey a navigation act for laying i^ 
under contribution, by the prowess of stock I Force, con- 
quest, and colonization, furnish the food to English com- 
merce, which it disgorges to be again swallowed by paper 
stock. Should our commerce mistake this devourer for 
nourishment, unpossessed of the power of forcing its liver to 
grow as it is eaten, it will soon cease to excite the jealousy 
of English commerce. The prosperity which has awak- 
ened that jealousy, was produced by its freedom; and the 
vigorous health hence derived, will speedily be exchanged 
for the hypochondriacal, and convulsive fluctuations of law> 
war^ and stockjobbing, if it is placed under the patronage 
of paper stock. 

Charter, monopoly and aristocracy in their several forms 
(those of funding and banking excepted) have been consid- 
ered by commerce as her foes. She will not even own for 
her friends, monopolies bestowed on merchants ; and ai~ 
though, under the delusion of containing within herself 
qualities for constituting separate orders or interests, she 
lias sometimes obtained them, yet she has universally upon 
trial found them unnatural to her constitution. 

Adverse to this idea is the paradoxical opinion, that 
commerce maybe made to flourish, by a paper capital, lo- 
cal, fictitious, and oppressive to land and labour. An opinion, 
contradicted by the commerce of -Carthage, under a defec- 
tive navigation ; and by the inability of English commerce 
to meet its rivals with the advantages of the greatest stock 
capital in the world, a superiority of manufactures, geo- 
graphical advantages, and an irresistible navy. She doffs 
the habiliments of a peaceable trader, eases herself in 
armour, and kills or maims her relations, to support that 



¥UNDING. 267 

We and rivalry with foreign nations, to which her stock 
regi men renders her unequal. 

if these reasons are insufficient to prove, that paper 
-rtoek is inimical to commerce, the next question is, whether 
it is able to bestow upon her benefits, which will counter- 
poise the advantages she derives from a free government ? 
Upon this question she will still find her interest united to 
her old friends, land and labour. If paper stock will des- 
troy the sound principles of governments, by corrupting 
their administrators, will it compensate land, labour and 
commerce, for enslaving all three ? Agriculture, manufac- 
tures and commerce, are indigenous, as it were, to human 
comfort and happiness ; paper stock is a foreign invader, 
whose object is to subdue these close friends and natural al- 
lies, Ivy instilling an opinion, that one of them will be bene- 
fitted by deserting to the common enemy. 

An association of casualties, frequently begets very 
whimsical associations of ideas. The rare casualty of des- 
potism and national prosperity, existing together, has begot- 
ten an opinion, that despotism would make a nation pros- 
per. And the commerce ef England, made up of a compli- 
cation of circumstances, has begotten an opinion, that the 
system of paper stock was favourable to commerce. That 
the opinion flows from this source, is undeniable, and that 
it is a source producing only a medley of errour, is equally 
so. It would be as correct, to pick out of this complication, 
any other circumstance, and to ascribe to it the state of the 
British commerce, as to paper stock ; and many might pre- 
tend to such a distinction witli far greater plausibility. 

Commerce, monarchy, paper stock, legislative corrup- 
tion, privileged orders, charters of exclusive commerce, and 
hierarchy, exist together in England. Is there an affinity 
also between paper stock and monarchy, legislative cor- 
ruption, privileged orders, exclusive charters for commerce, 
and hierarchy, because all exist with it ; (he reason sup- 
posed to prove the affinity between this stock and com- 
merce ; or is the simultaneous reason sound in one case and 



26 & FUNDING, • 

unsound in all the others ? Or if the combination ot paper' 
stock with eo amerce, monarchy, legislative corruption, ex- 
clusive charters and hierarchy,, proves its affinity to all, 
would it be best to take all for the sake of commerce, or ie 
reject all for the sake of liberty ? 

The dilemma is avoided, by exploding the errour of eon- 
sidering paper stock as favourable to commerce, because 
they exist together in England. That one is the bane of the 
other, we have already inferred from the necessity of Eng- 
land to resort to war and conquest to cultivate her com- 
meree. That one could acquire opulence without the 
other, is proved in the experience of Carthage. And the 
early dismay with which England beheld a commercial- 
competition with America before her introduction of paper 
-toek, is a modern concurrence with ancient experience. 

The commerce of the United States commenced itfitf 
operations unconnected with paper money, and advanced 
for many years without acknowledging its aid; it was 
obliged to travel from one hemisphere to another, before it 
could enter into competition with its rivals; it was unpro- 
tected by fleets : it traded on the funds of four millions only 
of people, cultivating a soil, poor in comparison with many 
countries to be rivalled ; and it possessed no foreign domin- 
ions to fleece. Yet it suddenly aroused the jealousy of the 
most extensive commerce in the world, by outstripping all 
others. These effects appeared either before it was possi- 
ble for it to owe any obligations to paper money, ar whilst 
T.uch obligations must have been inconsiderable. But our 
commerce was free. Will it not act precipitately in de- 
serting a career so happily commenced under the auspices 
of freedom, to enlist under those of paper stock, from an 
opi.iion that its rival derived opulence from that source; 
It mav by the experiment enslave itself without enslaving 
India: it may oppress its land and labour associates by a 
licet, without acquiring the empire el" the sea; it may guide 
crouds of people by monopoly, into a willingness to ex-, 
Khange^t ribodenite- climate omkVtetMt* saflf r . 



FUNDING. %m 

frigid zones ; and to snap all the ties of the human heart, 
in an eagerness to flee from the direct and indirect taxation 
of paper stock ; without possessing a Botany Bay to hide 
the crimes, which oppression will beget ; and having at 
length lost its original vital principle, it may in its last ago- 
nies deplore the infatuation, which dazzled it with tiie unat- 
tainable and transitory expedients of English force and 
monopoly. 

Paper money is precisely as unable to draw up out of 
futurity, the commodities of commerce, as the energies of 
war. The stock in trade of an individual may consist of 
signs or representatives, but the stock of commerce consists 
of the things themselves ; namely, the products of the earth, 
and manufactures. Specie cannot draw forward any of 
these things from the next century into the present ; it can 
only draw them from one country into another; even this 
cannot be effected by local paper money ; its office is to 
transfer real wealth from man to man, not by commerce, 
but by a juggle in legal and local signs of property. This 
is effected by monopolies for uttering, and regulating the 
quantity of paper money. It has been a general opinion 
that monopoly was a principle, unfavourable to commercial 
prosperity. . Commerce struggled to destroy perpetuities, 
and monopoly to prevent alienations. In the distribution of 
wealth, commerce is active, unwearied and useful ; devoted 
to its monopoly, she becomes speculative, voluptuous and 
pernicious; under the latter employment she sickens; un- 
natural as it is to her, it is the essential quality of paper 
systems. Whilst the office of one is to distribute and of the 
o^her to monopolize^ natural enmity is strongly to be ap- 
prehended. 

That paper stock will have the effect of accumulating 
wealth in the hands of individuals, is admitted by i(s friends 
arid foes, and confirmed by experience. This effect is the 
emet reason felt m its defence. It can only he produced hy 
thievishly taking from some to enrich ethers; or by mi- 
rncztlously drawing up out of futurity the. commodities of 



370 EUNDIXG, 

eoinmeree, as it pretends to do the energies of war ; or by 
propelling and exciting human industry : it remains to con- 
sider, whether, in this last character, it acts as a goad or a 
reward ; and whether any more effectual, permanent, and 
upright mode of excitement is practicable. 

Several ideas occurring here, will be postponed until the 
subject of banking is considered. At present, however, 
it is necessary to remark, that stock, created for war or 
eommeree, will equally excite either as a goad or a reward, 
and that if it acts as a goad, it behooves us to consider whe- 
ther industry, like bravery, may not be excited in some bet- 
ter mode. 

Any species of paper stock, which is a debt upon national 
industry, is taxation. Taxation is not a reward. It be- 
longs to the tyrannical class of excitements. If such ex- 
citements have a stronger influence over the human mind, 
than those arising from the principles of social liberty, the 
governments of the United States are founded in an errone- 
ous policy. They have all conceived that industry would 
he better excited by justice, than by taxation; that com 
merce to flourish, needed only to be free ; and that by free- 
dom, the supplies of land and labour would be increased. 
By free and moderate government, our constitutions have 
expected to excite a military spirit to defend, an industrious 
spirit to improve, and a commercial spirit to enrich our 
country. Neither the monopolies of standing armies, he- 
reditary perpetuities, or chartered currencies, were con- 
sidered as the best excitements for defending, cultivating, 
or enriching it. 

A feudal or landed monopoly starved commerce, because 
it tended to discourage industry, by which commerce is sup- 
plied. This effect flowed from the injustice of enriching by 
legal monopoly without industry. A monopoly for the re- 
gulation of a paper currency, far more unexceptionable, en- 
riches by law without industry; and in producing the same 
effect, discloses that it is the same principle. If this mo- 
nopoly was guided by a noble order, unconnected with com 



FUNDING. Wtl 

laeree, she would exclaim against it ; and guided by her, 
she is able to use it to oppress agriculture and labour, just 
as the feudal monopoly was used to oppress labour and com- 
merce. That she won hi diminish her own prosperity, 
is an insufficient security against the abuse of such a mo- 
nopoly. The landed interest diminished its owrt prosperity, 
by the oppression of commerce and labour. By justice, as 
to all three, a nation will prosper; by enabling* either to 
draw wealth from the other two, by law. without industry, 
the common good or general interest is invariably wounded. 

Equally remediless is the evil of corporate bodies for re- 
gulating commercial currency, by the expedient of forming 
them with land holders, merchants, and manufacturers. 
That a land holder will not oppress a landed interest, is a 
stale and exploded idea. If he receives the tax or the office , 
in which the oppression consists, although he contributes 
towards it from his land, the security vanishes. The whole 
catalogue of tyrants h; ve been land holders. If a bank cur- 
rency is a tax upon land *Jbour, and commerce, as will here- 
after be demonstrated, stock holders, even composed of land 
holders, merchants and manufacturers, will for ever remain 
willing to receive the whole tax, though they may contri- 
bute a proportion of it. Nor will it follow, that bank or fund- 
ed stock is beneficial to the landed, commercial or manufac- 
turing interest, because we see several land holders, mer- 
chants and manufacturers enriched by it ; any more than 
that sinecure offices would be beneficial to these interests, 
were we to see several land holders, merchants and manu- 
facturers enriched by them. It is the income drawn from 
land and labour, and not any benefit rendered to commerce 
by stock, which causes its wealth. And this fact is the 
true reason, why stock transplants men from the natural 
interests of society, into the artificial interest of paper and 
patronage. 

To buy cheap, and to sell dear, is admitted to be the ob- 
ject of commerce. The English mode of effecting these 
objects, is to compel labour to sell, and foreign nations to 



27% sOTBis*,* 

buy, at the prices which paper monopoly shall settle. If 
the code of pillage con tarns a law, allowing* one nation to 
pilfer another, that of social justice contains none, hy which 
the idea, of enabling an artificial interest, directly or indi- 
rectly, to force down or regulate the prices of the natural 
interests in the same community, can be defended. 

No benefit arises to a nation from such an operation. It 
merely creates a rich order, by creating a poor order. The 
wealth obtained from the foreign nation by the reductions 
imposed upon the price of labour at home, is only taken by 
force or fraud from that labour, and given to stock capital- 
Ists. This is precisely the species of excitement produced 
hy the English, and all other paper systems. National, 
soeia! and moral law unite in pronouncing it to be unjust. 
And however it may enrich a few, it impoverishes and 
oppresses a multitude, and changes commerce into a na- 
tional curse. It becomes a blessing, whenever one nation 
can undersell another; not when an order or several mer- 
chants, are enabled to undersell foreign merchants, at the 
expense of fellow-citizen manufacturers. It is no benefit 
to the plundered, that the robber can undersell a fair pur- 
©haser. 

The rival modes for enabling one nation to undersell 
another, are, the 7 English, composed of force, fraud and 
paper, and calculated to render labour subservient to ava- 
rice, by bestowing on the latter the power of regulating 
wages ; and that, which acquires the same advantage from 
the moderation, freedom and cheapness of the government. 
By this system the United States have suece? dly rivalled 
Europe, and obtained a degree of prosperity not embittered 
hy the reflection of having killed and plundered foreign na- 
tions, and oppressed fellow-citizens, for the sake of com- 
merce. 

If paper systems are in their nature suitable to legisla- 
tive corruption, aristocracy and monarchy ; and if the mo- 
mentum they bestow upon commerce, will enrich a few and 
impoverish a multitude of 'he stofrite nation : yet. it is still 



FUNDING. 27B 

said, that paper stock or national debt is an augmentation 
of national property, in addition to its retributing a nation 
for the taxes it inflicts, by the industry it excites. 

The 5th chapter of Sterne's posthumous works, gives an 
account of a pamphlet written by himself in defence of Sir 
Robert Walpole, and contains the origin of this doctrine. 
He proved, says he, *' that the accumulation of taxes, like 
i6 the rising of rents, was the surest token of a nation^ 
" thriving ; that the dearness of markets, with these new mw- 
•< posts of government, necessarily doubled industry ; ami 
" that an increase of this natural kind of manufacture, was 
" adding to the capital stock of the commonwealth." He 
subjoins, " that his book had been the codex, or ars politiea 
" of all the ministerial sycophants ever since that ffira ; and 
" that he had scarcely met with a paragraph in any of the 
« state hireling writers, for many years past, that he could 
« not trace fairly back to his own code." 

If American commerce, dazzled with the glare of the 
English, produced by consuming great masses of domestick 
and foreign happiness, is insensible to the prophetick satire of 
Sterne, and the catastrophe hovering over her rival, we 
must intreat her to have recourse to her own skill in calcu- 
lation, and to estimate political consequences, with only half 
the attention she would devote to a trading voyage. 

Mr. Adams has told her, that three orders, two of them 
hereditary, are necessary to create a limited monarchy, a 
monarchical republiek, or the English form of government. 
We remind her, that orders appear in every monarchy, 
limited or despotick. The nobility of Germany, France and 
Spain, the Mandarins of China, the Nabobs of India, the 
Bashaws of Turkey, and the military order in every form, 
are proofs, that monarchy, mixed or pure, can only be sup- 
ported by orders. 

If we have proved, that paper systems lead to the estab- 
lishment -of orders ; and if those which are guilty of oppres- 
sion, or those which suffer it, are naturally driven to mo- 
narchy for defence or protection ; orders or separate and 

36 



-27* FUNDING. 

inimical interests, are universally to be considered as the 
prelude to monarchy. And whether they will terminate in 
a limited or absolute monarchy are the events to be calcu- 
lated. The probability of either is only to be inferred from 
experience. And the evidence of experience is found, by 
counting tSie cases wherein orders or separate legal inter- 
ests, have resulted in absolute despotism or limited monar- 
chy. The catalogue of the first class, is almost coequal 
with the number of governments, which have ever existed ; 
and one case exists, or in its purity has existed, according 
to Mr. Adams, of the other. 

This is the adventure, upon which American commerce 
is embarking her freedom and prosperity. By favouring 
the English paper system, she endeavours to introduce se- 
parate and inimical interests ; these will beget monarchy ; 
there is a thousand to one, that this monarchy will be abso- 
lute, even supposing that one case does exist, wherein or- 
ders have protected liberty by checking monarchy. If no 
such case exists, she exchanges her freedom and prosperity 
for slavery ; if it does, she takes the chance of one against 
a thousand, of exchanging it for limited monarchy, in pre- 
ference to a free republick. 

But commerce will exclaim that she is an enemy to or- 
ders or separate interests, that she is a republican, and m 
favour of equal rights and privileges. We shall believe her 
if she unites in the expulsion of a separate interest ; but if 
3he craftily turns her eyes from the quarter, on which it is 
advancing, however vociferously she may call our attention 
to a feint, she will be suspected of a confederacy with the 
ea« my. 

Nobility and hierarchy are not the only modes of consti- 
tuting orders, proper for fomenting national discontent, and 
introducing monarchy, if it is true, as Mr. Adams asserts, 
and as all mankind allow, " that wealth, is the great ma- 
chine for governing the world." Hence wealth, like suf- 
frage, must be considerably distributed, to sustain a demo* 
eraiick republick $ and hence, whatever draws a conslde* 



FUNDING. 275 

rable proportion of either into a few Lands, will destroy it 
As power follows wealth, the majority must have wealth or 
lose power. If wealth is accumulated in the hands of a few, 
either by a feudal or a stock monopoly, it carries the pow- 
er also ; and a government becomes as certainly aristocrat- 
icai, by a monopoly of wealth, as by a monopoly of arms, 
A minority, obtaining a majority of wealth or arms in any 
mode, becomes the government. 

Nobility and hierarchy cannot acquire in the United 
States the article of wealth, necessary to constitute a sepa- 
rate order or interest, and therefore they can only be used 
as feints to cover the real attack. It cannot be forgotten, 
that aristocracy is a Proteus, capable of assuming various 
forms, and that to make these forms appear in that natural 
hideousness common to the features of the family, it is neces- 
sary to touch it with some test, an accumulation of wealth 
by law without industry, is this test. In our situation and 
temper it can only be effected by patronage and paper, 
which now bestow monarchy and groans upon England, 
Title without wealth is the shadow; an accumulation of 
wealth by law, is the substance. We have only to deter- 
mine which is the feint, and which is the foe. 

We hear indeed of the aristocracy of the first and second 
ages, fi'om the repinings not the efforts of hierarchy and ti- 
tle ; whilst paper systems and patronage, the aristocracy of 
the third, are using force, faith and credit, as the two others 
did religion and feudality ; and these new artifices cloak 
themselves under the smoke produced by the explosion of 
the old. 

Against one shadow of aristocracy, the general consti- 
tution provides in these words, " no title of nobility shall be 
granted hy the United States." Suppose, as a provision 
against the other, some member of the convention had pro 
posed, " that the reinstatement of Jupiter, and the convo* 
cation of Olympus should be prohibited ;" Ought he not to 
have been seconded by the inventor of the security against 
aristocracy, contained in the prohibition of titles? The' 



276 FUNDING, 

people of England were taught to believe, that they ha«* 
nothing to fear except from the pope and the pretender, by 
the ministers who mortgaged theni irredeemably to op- 
pression. 

Imaginary Gods and empty titles, are in the United 
States equally to be dreaded, and are equally able to erect 
the aristocracies of superstition or feudality. A pecuniary 
interest, quartered on nations by law, is here the engine of 
power and oppression. Unnecessary office, sinecure income, 
stockjobbing by the lawmaker, a legislative patronage of 
separate interests or factions, and a concentrated power to 
tax, to incorporate, to borrow and to receive, make up the 
convolutions of a serpent, which is silently and insidiously 
entwining liberty ; and to divert our attention from the ope- 
ration, we are terrified by the dead skeletons of the two an- 
cient aristocratical mamoths, 

Superstition has received its death blow from know- 
ledge ; a landed aristocracy, from commerce, alienation and 
the division of inheritances. Against the dead, liberty is 
safe; from the living aristocracy of paper and patronage 
alone, she can receive a deadly wound. 

A man, being informed that three assassins had deter- 
mined upon his death, but that two of them had suffered the 
punishment due to other crimes, solemnly anathematizes 
the dead bodies, and takes into his bosom the living mur- 
derer. Liberty is the man ; superstition and title her dead 
enemies; and the system of paper and patronage her living 
foe. 

But we are blinded by names. Hierarchy concealed its ' 
malignity, by usurping the name of religion. The new sys- 
tem of oppression conceals itself, by calling patronage, ne- 
cessary office ; a funding system, faith and credit ; and a 
banking system, an encouragement of commerce. Mankind 
have discovered the difference between religion and hierar- 
chy; they must also discover that between useful and per- 
nicious offices, between genuine and spurious faith and cre- 
dit, and between commerce and monopoly, before they can 
maintain moderate and free governments. 



ENDING. 277 

The system. of paper monopoly deceives no less by re- 
jecting, than by assuming names. It renounces titles, that 
it may be thought to have renounced aristocracy. And it 
renounces disorderly government, that it may be thought to 
have a regard for private property. But titles are incon- 
sistent with its species of aristocracy, and property is more 
securely and permanently invaded and transferred, by a re- 
gular and orderly system, than by occasional and disorderly 
Violations. 

This love of property is artfully seized by the system of 
paper and patronage, as a handle with which to guide hu- 
man nature. Whilst superstition was its strongest passion, 
that was the handle used for the same purpose. But this 
system, discovering that a love of superstition has given 
place to a love of property, and concluding that mankind are 
fated for ever to be traitors to their reason and dupes to 
their passions, moulds them to its purposes by the same 
means which superstition used successfully for ages. 

Had the system of paper and patronage, proposed to 
give property in Heaven for property on earth, the count- 
less profit of the exchange might have reasonably attracted 
the passion of avarice, and in some measure varnished over 
the imposture ; but when it imposes on a love of property, 
hy pretending to revere and protect, that which its only em- 
ployment is to violate and transfer, we cannot forbear to ex- 
claim, that avarice is a greater fool than superstition ; we 
are dismayed at discovering that a stronger engine for ma- 
nufacturing tyranny exists, than superstition itself; ihis 
mind startles at its own imbecility, and shudders at its visi- 
ble love of imposture. 

A love of property, under which the system of paper and 
patronage crouches, is the very passion by which it ought 
to be assailed. All frauds pretend to be founded upon the 
principles, which apply most forcibly against them 5 just 
as superstition pretended to be religion. So this system 
uses the passion of avarice in others, to gratify its own. By 
pretending to protect property, it acquires property. It 



378 FUNDIXG. 

ingeniously persuades us, that it can effect the first object, 
without possessing a single quality adequate to it ; and that 
it does not effect the other, with qualities competent to no 
other end. And it gravely and loudly proclaims its love of 
good order, hut conceals that its motive for such apparent 
integrity, is the perpetuation and security of its own unjust 
acquisitions. 

A love of good order, is a publick virtue. It is more 
useful the wider it is diffused. Is it good policy to bribe a 
minority into a profession of this virtue, by suffering it to 
pillage a majority ? Is good order secured by rendering the 
mass of a nation discontented, to content a few ? Let ub 
inquire whether such a policy is wise. No one will assert 
that it is just. 

The love of property is now the second basis of civil 
government. The question is, how a wise statesman should 
avail himself of this passion. If he forcibly or fraudulent- 
ly takes wealth from a multitude, and gives it to a few,* 
these few, it is confessed, will support all his projects, bad 
or good ; and call his government orderly, and a protector 
of private property. But if he forbears to take directly or 
indirectly from the multitude, in order to corrupt a faction, 
he acquires the affection and support of this multitude. The 
difference between the acquisitions is this. The corrupted 
faction will adhere to the vicious as well as just measures of 
our statesman ; the majority, treated justly, will condemn 
his vices, and only applaud his virtues. That government 
or party therefore which designs to do wrong, will resort to 
©ne policy; and that which designs to do right, to the 
other. 

It is a falsehood, that the policy of enriching a minority 
at the publick expense, is ever resorted to, for the purpose 
of protecting property; or that it is capable of any such ef- 
fect. The idea of hiring a minority in civil government, to 
protect the property of a majority, is visibly absurd, Both 
from its physical inability, and also because all minor inte 
rests iriveste<l with political power, have universally violate?] 



FUNDING* 279 

property. That they shall necessarily do so, is therefore a 
settled moral law. 

Our policy and constitutions rigidly distinguish between 
good and evil moral principles, upon this subject. The love 
and protection of property was one of those good moral 
principles which caused the war with England. In a gov- 
eminent, it is only a virtue, so long as this love and pro- 
tection shall be impartially extended to every member of 
the society. Of this virtue, avarice is the correspondent 
vice. It loves and pilfers the property of others, and pro- 
tects what it gets. Does the system of paper and patronage 
correspond with the virtue or the vice ? 

The force of this reasoning is sometimes eluded, by 
charging it with assailing the propriety of taxing, for the 
support of civil government. This is an artifice to hide the 
iniquity of taxing for the benefit of the aristocracy of paper 
and patronage, under the justice of taxing for the common 
good. To infer that we are inimical to needful taxes, from 
our endeavouring to display the principles and effects of the 
aristocracy of the third age, is only a repetition of the arti- 
fice, which induced the aristocracy of the first age, to ac- 
cuse a man of irreligion, whenever he reasoned against su- 
perstition. 

Bespotick power strives to blend itself with legitimate 
government, as paper stock does with private property 3 
both endeavouring to sanction the evils they dispense, by tha 
blessings which flow from the resemblances they falsely as- 
sume ; and private property, the earning of labour, the 
reward of merit, the almoner of age, and the soul of civili- 
zation, is transformed by stock into a political monster, as 
hideous as government transformed by tyranny. It becomes 
the right of fraud, the scourge of industry, and the instru- 
ment of despotism. Stock private property, can condemn 
the seventh part of the most industrious and ingenious na- 
tion in the world, to poverty and vice, or to hospitals and 
prisons. When freedom and tyranny are both called gov- 
ernment, and rightful acquisitions and paper stock both 



called private property, it can only be, to say the most for 
such denominations, as Gabriel and the Devil are both cal* 
led angels. 

Mankind have suffered nearly as much from confound- 
ing natural with fictitious property, as from confounding 
legitimate with spurious power. If the acquisitions of use* 
f ul qualities are genuine private property, can the crafty 
pilferings from useful qualities under fraudulent laws, to 
gratify bad qualities, be genuine private property also ? If 
the fruit of labour is private property, can stealing this 
fruit from labour, also make private property ? 

By calling the artillery property, which is placing on 
property, the battery is masked. Tythes and stoek, invent- 
ed to take away private property, are as correctly called 
private property, as a guillotine could be called a head. 
The system of Mr. Adams and Lord Shaftsbury, is founded 
upon the principle of applying the guillotine of law, to pro- 
perty instead of heads, to keep wealth, to which they both 
correctly annex power, balanced among three orders ; the 
stock system is founded in the same principle, with this 
difference, that it takes away the entire property or its pro- 
fit from majorities, whereas the s\ stein of orders is content 
with two thirds of it. 

There are two modes of invading private property ; the 
first, by which the poor plunder the rich, is sudden and vio- 
lent ; the second, by which the rich plunder the poor, slow 
and legal. One begets ferocity and barbarism, the other 
vice and penury, and both impair the national prosperity 
and happiness, inevitably flowing from the correct and 
honest principle of private property. 

When it is proposed to tax stoek or tythes for the sup- 
port of civil government, they claim the stipendiary charac- 
ter to procure an exemption from taxation ; but when it is 
proposed to abolish them, because the services under which 
this stipendiary character its claimed, have become useless or 
pernicious, they as loudly claim the character and the rights 
cf private property. Feudality, hierarchy, and paper stock, 



FUNDING, 28* 

Jhave each successfully resorted to these subterfuges to keep 
justice at bay; and had the English House of Commons been 
open to the clergy, as all the departments of the American 
government are to stockjobbers, the former would probably 
have still maintained the same invaluable exclusive privi- 
lege, which the latter now enjoy. 

The American constitutions are equally opposed to inva- 
sions of property by fraudulent and swindling laws; or by 
impracticable, dishonest and ruinous equalising reveries of 
political enthusiasts. They pursue the idea of securing to 
talents and industry their earnings, and not of transferring 
these earnings to others. Therefore they have rejected an 
equality of property, standing armies, hierarchies and pri- 
vileged orders ; and had they foreseen, that their principle 
in relation to property, was capable of being undermined by 
paper magick, that also would have been specifically guarded 
against. 

Accumulations and divisions of property by law, simple 
or complicated, are equally adverse to our policy, and to 
moral rectitude. Both will excite hatred, discourage indus- 
try, and infuse knavery into the .national character, by di- 
viding it into factions, perpetually striving to pillage each 
other. Whether the law shall gradually transfer the pro- 
perty of the many to the few, or insurrection shall rapidly 
divide the property of the few among the many, it is equally 
an invasion of private property, and equally contrary to our 
constitutions. 

If equalising and accumulating laws are the same in 
principle, it is inconceivable how the same mind should be 
able to detest the one, and approve the other. Integrity is 
compelled to reject both, and spurning at doctrines, calcu- 
lated to incite the few to plunder the many, or the many to 
plunder the few, leaves every man under the strongest ex- 
citement to labour for his own and the national prosperity, 
from a conviction, that the laws are a mantle of justice, and 
,iotar> intricate net to fish for his earnings. 

3T 



Our policy is founded upon the idea, that it is both wise 
and just, to leave the distribution- of property to industry 
and talents ; that what they acquire is all their own, except 
what they owe to society ; that they owe nothing to society 
except a contribution equivalent to the necessities of gov* 
ernment ; that they owe nothing to monopoly or exclusive pri- 
vilege in any form; 'and that whether they are despoiled 
hy the rage of a mob, or the laws of a separate interest, the 
genuine sanction of private property is equally violated. 
Are these the principles of our policy? Do paper systems 
correspond with these principles? 

If legislative patronage enriches a portion of society, 
that position is necessarily converted into an order, posses- 
sing the qualities of a i aristocracy. It is placed between 
the government and the nation. It receives wealth from the 
One, and takes it from the other. This ties it to the gov- 
ern oent by the passion of avarice, and separates it from the 
nation by the passion of fear. And these two passions, an- 
nexed to any separate interest, have unexeeptionably con- 
vened it into a political order, and forced it into the ranks 
of despotism. 

War, in former times, enriched and aggrandized by con- 
quest: in modern* by loaning. Titled orders, in the first 
case, usurped and monopolized what the nations they be- 
longed to, conquered from their enemies ; and hy means of 
this usurps wealth, enslaved the conquerors. Paper or- 
ders acq lire wealth in modern wars by loaning, although 
nothing is obtained by conquest. Now, a nation, by war 
without conquest, is made to furnish the means for its own 
subjection. The enemies of the Roman people, supplied the 
means for enslaving the Roman people. The English pay 
for their slavery t-e nselves. An interest enriched by war, 
successful or unfortunate, must be separate and aristo- 
cratical. 

Nations have effected an improvement in universal law, 
or the law of nations, without deriving from it' the greatest 
advantage it is calculated to produce. Conquest respects 



FUNDING, 28£ 

private property ; hence a nation can no longer conquer for 
itself. Formerly, every individual of a conquering army, 
got some share of the plunder; if his- officer obtained a 
palace, the soldier got a cottage ; if his officer obtained an 
house, the soldier got a cow. Then, one nation might be 
said to conquer another, although the spoil was unequally 
divided. But now the expression has become inaccurate, 
because there is precisely that degree of protection allowed 
by conquest to private property, necessary to the interest of 
the modern aristocracy of paper and patronage. As there- 
fore, under the modern law of nations, no nation can gain 
any share of the booty, or conquer another nation, it is 
strange that nations should still go to war, when they can 
only conquer themselves ; and that this propensity appa- 
rently increases. 

In the solution of this enigma lies a proof, that paper 
stock is a separate aristocratical interest. Titled orders 
fomented war, as in the case of the Roman patricians, be- 
cause they obtained the best share of the spoil. The no- 
bility in England no longer foment war, because they are 
not aggrandized by it. And war has been still more ar- 
dently fomented in that country than ever, because their 
system of paper and patronage gain spoil by it in any event. 
Conquest furnishes it with funds on which to bottom more 
stock, and the war which made the conquest, with a pretext 
for quartering more patronage and paper on its own nation. 
Is not that a separate aristocratical interest which gains 
more by war and conquest, than orders of titled nobility 
formerly did ? Those got most, this gets all. 

The Roman aristocracy engaged the nation in war to 
aggrandize itself; but it entertained the people with shows* 
feasts and triumphs, and allowed them some small share of 
the booty. The English aristocracy of paper and patron- 
age, engages the nation in war for the same purpose ; and 
entertains the people with heavy taxes, hard labour, penal 
laws and Botany Bay, 



284 FUfftfftfCt.. 

Ancient and modern wars between civilized nations, 
have chiefly originated in the avarice and ambition of indi- 
viduals, orders, or factions. A propensity for war, is evi- 
dently a separate interest inimical to a nation ; and if this 
interest is contrived to derive vast accessions of wealth and 
power from every war, fortunate er unfortunate, from vic- 
tory or defeat, it must be driven into a propensity for war, 
by an influence, exceeding in power, that which was suffi- 
cient to drive feudal barons into war, for their own advan- 
tage, and the oppression of mankind. 

These barons were in some measure cheeked by the fear 
of danger. Their lives were risked in battle, and their 
possessions lost by defeat. But bank or debt stock shed no 
blood in war. To them it is a sure game. Hazarding 
nothing, a chance for winning of their foes, and a certainty 
of winning of their friends, must inspire them with princi- 
ples more inimical to friends and foes, than even those of 
the separate feudal interest. 

This system exhibits a new mode of enslaving nations in- 
finitely more powerful than any heretofore invented. It 
can conquer a nation, whilst that nation is in a career of 
victory. Marlborough's victories created more debt, and of 
course destroyed more liberty in England, than any previ- 
ous war. It places governments beyond the influence or 
scrutiny of the people. Two governments may engage in 
war for the purpose of obtaining power and wealth, each 
from its own nation. The cause of quarrel, the battles, the 
sieges and the peace, might be all amicably arranged before 
the declaration of war; and a complete victory infallibly 
secured to both the governments, without the transfer of an 
acre of territory. The system of paper and patronage 
would be the key to such a war, as it is to the history of 
England for the last century. 

This evident propensity for war, arising from the strong- 
est conceivable excitement, of itself suffices unquestionably 
to establish the enmity of paper systems to our policy, if 
our policy is friendly to liberty* To that, every species of 



FtfNTDtSTG. %$& 

war is dangerous ; and one, fed by paper systems, fatal. 
Tiie princes leagued against France, though beaten in the 
field, obtained a victory at home by paper and patronage, 
and by the effects of war, destroyed republican opinions in 
France. War, in this one operation, has, before our eyes, 
diminished the liberty of about twenty European nations. 

Not the titles of orders, but a separate interest from the 
rest of a community, has induced them to harrass the human 
race with war. Are the privileged titles of England, able 
to govern or control its system of paper and patronage ? If 
not, these titles have long ceased to be the cause of her 
wars. They have neither motive nor power to produce 
them. But the system of paper and patronage has power 
to produce war or peace, and war is produced. This hun- 
gry calculator does not go to war out of chivalry, but from 
interest. Its propensity is proved in this evidence ; its 
enmity to all majorities in society is a consequence of this 
propensity ; and its aristocratical spirit, of that enmity. 

A perpetual increase of taxes, is a constant effect of pa- 
per systems. Being essential to their existence, the conse- 
quences only are to be considered. Mankind have talked 
and written for ages about liberty, and yet the world is as 
far from agreeing in a definition of it, as Europe is from 
settling a balance of power. It is because liberty is made 
to consist in metaphysical dogma. As a thing of real sub- 
stance and use, taxation, unmetaphysical taxation, is able to 
supply us with a correct idea of it. Heavy taxes in peace 
are unexceptionably political slavery. Liberty and slavery 
are contrary principles, and therefore liberty does not pro- 
duce heavy taxes. Suppose, however, a conjuncture can 
be conceived, of liberty and heavy taxes in union : yet a 
free form of government cannot last, if heavy taxes continue 
until the poverty of the payers, and the wealth of the re- 
ceivers, have separated the nation into two orders far apart. 
Heavy taxes are both an effect and a cause of tyranny, and 
cannot therefore be admitted in a substantial definition of 
Jiberty ; being an inevitable consequence of paper systems, 



2St> FUNDING. 

these also must be substantially inimical to liberty, however 
consistent they may be with her metaphysical definitions. 

Taxation, direct or indirect, produced b\ a paper system 
in any form, will rob a nation of property, without giving it 
liberty ,• and by creating and enriching a separate interest, 
will rob it of its liberty, without giving it property. Taxa- 
tion, for the maintenance of civil government or national de- 
fence, will also take away property ; but then it may bestow 
liberty. The slave, who receives subsistence from a mas- 
ter, may advantageously compare situations with the vassal 
of the first species of taxation; he gets something for his 
liberty and property ; he gets subsistence without care : his 
compeer loses his liberty and property, and only gains an 
augmentation of the anxieties of life. To the second spe- 
cies of taxation, mankind are indebted for social liberty. 
How have these opposite principles been blended and con- 
founded with each other ? Merely by the avarice and am- 
bition of orders, separate interests or aristocracy. How 
cautious and circumspect ought nations to be, when they 
discover, that the most inimical moral principles are hidden 
in one term ? One species of taxation destroys ; the other, 
preserves their liberty. 

Barbarism thirsts for blood ; civilization for wealth. To 
defend men against these propensities is the legitimate end 
of civil government. A government, administered so as to 
expose property but protect life in a civilized nation, is 
equivalent to a government, contrived to protect property 
but to expose life in a savage one 5 and the barbarian, whose 
property was safe, whilst his life was defenceless against 
the passion of blood-thirstiness, might as justly boast of 
his freedom, as the civilized man, whose life was safe, 
whilst his property was exposed to appease the money- 
tliirstiness of paper and patronage. 

If that species of protection to property, afforded by pa- 
per systems, operated in an invasion of the principal instead 
of the profit, it would be universally assailed as a robber. 
How thin is the veil by which we are deceived? We are 



lUNDOTG. 237 

content to lose the profit for the sake of the occupation. 
We forget that the safety of property consists in the enjoy- 
ment of its profits ; and that the utmost permanent violation 
of which it is capable, is consistent with occupation and sub- 
sistence. 

The history of Villanage illustrates this idea. Villains 
were nominally emancipated for the interest of the masters, 
not of the slaves. With subsistence and the occupation of 
property as tenants, they were more profitable to the barons 
than in a state of direct slavery. Paper systems, taking 
the hint from this history, have artfully placed themselves 
in the predicament of the feudal lords ; and nations, in that 
of emancipated villains. The profits are taken, the occupa- 
tion left, and this is called freedom or protection of property. 

These systems, being simply compounded of debt and 
taxation, must divide a nation into annuitants and labour- 
ers, engender want and luxury, reduce each individual to 
the alternative of oppressing or being oppressed, and culti- 
vate avarice and rapaciousness both by the gain they bes- 
tow, and the loss they inflict. Divines and philosophers 
may possibly have erred in omitting hitherto to recommend 
sUch principles, as promoters of virtue, religion and national 
happiness. Whether politicians have found out, that a 
power in legislators to enrich themselves by stock of their 
own creation, will perfect the system of election and repre- 
sentation, is hereafter to be considered. 

A nation is never conquered by an army, or enslaved by 
a faetion, so long as it is willing to defend itself. The con- 
centration of wealth in a few hands, obliterates this dispo- 
sition. The disciplined Romans were subdued by raw bar- 
barians, when the lands of Italy were held by less than three 
thousand proprietors. The feudal nations were weak, 
whilst a few nobles held the property of the nation ; and 
their petty wars were rendered less destructive by this na- 
tional imbecility. The same consequence resulted from the 
possession of one third of the property of a nation by the 
priesthood. And stock in England, which covers 



288 FUNDING. 

transfers property to its amount, is so well convinced that 
the motive exciting nations to self defence is thereby impair- 
ed, as to resort to the alternative of a standing army, and to 
stake the national existenee upon a battle, to be fought by 
mercenaries. The people and armies of the Roman empire 
frequently preferred a coalition with Scythian invaders, to 
the danger of resistance, or the calamity of victory ; and 
twelve millions of people are apprehending or invoking con- 
quest, on account of an unanimous opinion, that paper stock 
has incapacitated a great nation for defending itself against 
a single army. 

Oppressive taxation is the effect of standing armies, no- 
ble orders, hierarchies or paper stock. A similarity in mo- 
ral effects, demonstrates a similarity in moral causes. All 
of these have pretended to defend nations at different periods. 
.England possesses all these defenders. The first and the 
last are the modern champions of nations ; if she had pos- 
sessed neither, she never would have gained sundry victo- 
ries, but she would have possessed a gallantry which bur- 
^hensome taxes never inspired. And what conqueror can 
be more oppressive than two mercenary armies, one of sol- 
diers, and another of stockjobbers ? Besides, funding never 
{fights for a nation in imminent danger ; its wars are guided 
by other calculations, than those of publick safety ; and the 
moment of peril is the moment of its flight. 

If posterity could pass a law, for imposing heavy taxes 
en the present generation, the entire universe of existing 
progenitors would exclaim, " if you can rob us of property, 
" we can rob you of life. It is better that you should never 
"** exist, than that we who do exist, should be the prey of 
" your avarice ; than that a series of generations should be 
" sacrificed to one unborn and unsympathising." In the 
character of sufferers, the parties concur. Progenitors 
would destroy posterity, and posterity would destroy pro- 
genitors, rather than submit to unlimited, -unfeeling and un- 
consented to taxation 



FUNDING. 289 

Funding, by growing too rapidly in the Mississippi and 
South Sea cases, inconsiderately disclosed its real charac- 
ter $ it has since distended itself to a degree of magnitude and 
mischief in England infinitely exceeding those detestable 
frauds. An ugly cur, suddenly bursting upon a company 
of children, inspires them with horrour; and they get a 
young tiger, caress, feed and rear it, without a suspicion of 
its furious and bloody nature, until it devours them. But 
it is not the office of truth, in distinguishing between good 
and evil moral principles, however the deluded may believe 
that there is no generical affinity between a pug and a mas- 
tiff, to represent the same thing as a vice or a virtue ac- 
cording to its dimension ; and therefore it seems impossible 
to transplant funding of any size or age from the place in 
the moral world assigned to it by its own nature, or to ex- 
pect good moral effects, from a moral cause, fruitful of evil 
beyond most of its kindred. 

Between the two items of paper stock, the similitude is 
such, that, though this section is here concluded, the reader 
will discern in the nest, many observations applicable to 
its doctrine . 



*S 



290 



SECTION THE FIFTH, 



BANKING. 



J. shall now proceed to the examination of banking, iu 
the face of a prepossession, which has seized, like a paniek, 
upon the puhlick mind. If it is a limb of the aristocracy 
of the third age, it cannot be attached to the Body of our 
policy without some dismemberment to make room for it. 
We know that hanking made no part of this policy, state or 
continental, originally : and tiiat now, like the tail of a 
Cape sheep, it constitutes its most conspicuous member. 

Priests have at all times performed acts, which enrich 
themselves, and are by the laity believed to be miracles. 
Had it been your lot, reader, to address an audience com- 
posed of these priests and their laity, to prove that such 
acts were not miracles, what would you have considered as 
the most stubborn obstacles against success ? You answer, 
the interest of one party and the superstition of the other, 
And yet neither this interest nor superstition, furnish fact 
or argument as to the truth or falsehood of these miracles, 
or the justice of the tax they inilict. Ought either then 
to suffocate inquiry and truth ; and would you not pity the 
unhappy blindness or vice capable of fostering an errour sc 
gross ? 

Reader, I only ask you not to become yourself this ob 
ject of commiseration. Neither prejudice nor avarice will 
conduct you to truth. Refute the arguments which are 
refutable ; but yield your conviction to those which you 
cannot refute. 

Premising, that all the objections against debt stock or 
paper systems, apply with equal, and often with accumulated 



JttAXKIXG. 291 

force against banking ; and that the latter subject |s con- 
sidered separately, not as being of a very different nature, 
but for the sake of perspicuity : we will enter direetly 
wpon it. 

Had banking been called « a paper feudal system," and 
had the barons proposed to take it by that denomination as 
a reimbursement for their abolished tenures, it might have 
been fairly weighed against the landed feudal system, to 
estimate the effects of the exchange. In that eyent^ it 
would have been clearly seen by the people, that the money 
to be -collected by " a paper feudal system" for their lords, 
was the representative of the services rendered under the 
landed feudal system ; and that whatever convenience they 
might derive from altering the mode of payment, the pay- 
ment itself would remain. Money, or a circulating' medium 
of any kind, in its quality of representing property and la- 
hour, 'conveys property and labour to its possessor ; audit* 
A, entitled to the menial services of B, contracts to receive 
of S their value in money, though B may prefer this mode 
of payment, he must still perform the same value in labour 
to acquire the money it is commuted for. Such bargains 
were often made between the kings and the people of Eng- 
land, in the sale and purchase of vexatious prerogatives. If 
then a nation bestows a pecuniary income on an order of 
nobles or of bankers, it conveys so much of its services to 
this order as the. money represents ; nor is there &\iy differ 
ence between rendering the services in kind, and in the pe- 
cuniary commutation, except in the superior convenience 
of the latter mode ; since the services must be still perform- 
ed. If a great nation owed its personal labours to one 
thousand individuals, so much excepted as might afford a 
bare subsistence, it would mend its condition in a small de- 
gree, by purchasing them out for an annuity in money ; but 
not in a great one, if it paid to the order the full value qJ 
them. As money is a vehicle for retaining, it is also on? 
for conveying the most oppressive usurpations, and posses 
ses a complete capacity for re-eusl^ying nations indirectly. 



292 BANKING. 

after an accession of knowledge or a division of property,, 
lias liberated them from the direct feudal slavery. This 
treacherous quality of money was perceived by the Spartan 
legislator, without discerning any remedy for it, but that of 
destroying its inestimable benefits. It is clear that nations., 
by giving any species of currency to an order or interest, 
will give it a title to every species of service from the mul- 
titude : that the revival by law of a title to such services 
through the intervention of a currency, is a substantial re- 
vival of the feudal system ; that a legal currency possesses 
a power of destroying, with wonderful rapidity, the division 
of property which destroyed that system ; and that without 
a very considerable division of property, a free government 
cannot exist. The remedy for these evils, which Lycurgus 
did not discern, is to prohibit legal distributions of money 
or currency, those excepted rendered unavoidable by gov- 
ernment, and to leave their distribution to industry. 

Even the precious metals have furnished to the contriv- 
ers of pillage and oppression a medium for extracting indi- 
rectly from nations, a far greater proportion of their labour, 
than they could ever be made to pay directly by the feudal 
or any other regimen : but the impossibility of multiplying 
these metals at pleasure, inflicted a considerable cheek upon 
this fraudulent perversion of so useful a representative of 
property. An artificial currency is subject to no such check, 
and possesses an unlimited power of enslaving nations, if 
slavery consists in binding a great number to labour for a 
few. Employed, not for the useful purpose of exchanging, 
but for the fraudulent one of transferring property, currency 
is converted into a thief and a traitor, and begets, like an 
abuse of many other good things, misery instead of hap- 
piuess. 

Mankind soon discovered that money was easily convert- 
ed into a medium for oppression as well as for commerce, 
znd hence arose nearly as strong a dislike to heavy taxes in 
money as in kind ; it being clearly seen that labour and 
property were transferred by money. This plain truth. 



BANKING. 2#5 

awakened the exertions of avarice and ambition, to deceive 
the vigilance of labour and industry ; the objects of pillage. 
The first intricacy with which they endeavoured to bide 
their design, was woven of indirect taxes travelling m 
mazes; the second, of loaning obscured by the mist of futu- 
rity ; and tlic third, of an artificial currency or banking, 
complicated by the crookedness of its operation, flattering 
to industry, and restrained by no natural eftfceki as a medi- 
um of fraud a^d tyranny!, The defence of 'banking, " that 
44 its enormous annual acquisitions travel to it from some 
" terra incognita, anil are not drawn from the labour and 
« property of a nation," shall be first considered. 

The common nature of bank debt and funded debt, has 
attracted the common appellation, stock, Existing toge- 
ther, their price will fluctuate in relation to national adven- 
tures, because the national ability to pay, is eoextensively 
the sponsor for each. Peace and prosperity, cause bank 
and funded stock (o rise In price : war and ailVe&sity, cause 
both to fall. Both are heroes and patriots in safety, and 
cowards and traitors in danger. As the state of the fi&tibVi 
affects both in the same way, both must affect the state of 
the nation in the same way. If stock did not act upon the 
labour and property of nations, their adventures oVwealils 
could not react upon stock. The reaction is the same r< 
both funded and bank stock. 

If national adventures or measures can raise or (lunT- 
nish the value of bank stock, it is under the same induce- 
ment as debt stock, to influence a government. Therefore 
one hundred millions of bank stock, will acquire as much of 
this influence, created by laws and not by constitutions, as 
one hundred millions of debt stock. '1(4 sole object is to in 
duce a government to enable it to tax the nation, in an indi- 
rect and complicated mode, to enrich itself; whereas the 
chief design of our constitutional policy, is to subject the 
government to the national influence to prevent this wicked 
deed. Had there been no debt stock in England, but an 
equal value of bank stock, that alone would have influenced 



294 BANKING. 

the government to govern in the same mode, as bank and 
debt stock united induce or compel it to do. The same in- 
terests which now exist, would have existed in that case* 
namely, the stock interest, the government interest, and the 
national interest ; and the same union between the two first, 
would have produced the same effect to the last. 

Debt stock could not permanently receive its interest, 
where there was no labour ; if bank stock could not perma- 
nently receive its dividends, in the same case, those divi- 
dends, however indirectly collected, must also be paid by 
labour. As the fund necessary for the subsistence of the 
one, is necessary for the subsistence of the other, it follows 
that they are of the same nature, and must subsist by the 
same means ; and that neither debt stock nor bank stock 
can be fed, except by taxation, direct or indirect, simple or 
complicated. 

The degree of taxation produced by these engines, is 
capable of being ascertained with considerable correctness, 
Debt stock gives to a nation or its government, one hundred 
pounds of money, for an annuity of five or six pounds. 
Bank stock receives an annuity often or twelve pounds, in- 
eluding dividends, expenses and perquisites of directors, for 
keeping its hundred pounds. Which is the highest tax upen 
a nation— five millions annually for one hundred millions 
received i or ten millions annually on one hundred millions 
of bank stock, for nothing received ? Can the latter tax be 
concealed by its enormity, as a high mountain is hidden b/ 
clouds ? 

The custom of buying the privilege of banking, is an 
evidence of its nature. Unless it had been a tax, it could 
not be bought, nor could it be sold. The title by which a 
government sells, is that of national agent, selling national 
property ; and the purchaser is enabled to buy, by a reim- 
bursement of his purchase money with a profit. Sale and 
profit imply property : how h it reached in this case, ex- 
cept by taxation r 



The ingenuity of beguiling a nation* by bribing it with a 
part of its own, strengthens this observation. Suppose a, 
thousand stockjobbers, with the munificence and patriotism 
of stockjobbers, should say, "Society, create ten millions 
i{ of stock ; you may keep one fifth of it, as payment for four 
« fifths which you shall give us." The property of stock 
being to tax, the proposition simply is, " Society, if 3 on will 
permit us to tax you at eight hundred thousand dollars a 
year, (computing bank dividends at ten per centum?) you 
may tax yourselves at two hundred thousand.'* As bank 
stock holders retain their stock, they do not lend it to a na- 
tion as a compensation for taxing it by means of that stock. 
These two hundred thousand dollars, are ingeniously used 
to dazzle the multitude, so as to conceal from them, that 
they pay eight hundred thousand to individuals, for the pri- 
vilege of taking two hundred thousand from themselves, and 
bestowing it on the government. To be gulled by false 
prophecy or pretended miracle, is known to be within the 
capacity of human ignorance ; but a national inability to 
count is a real miracle. Corporate rights to tax the nation 
in a great sum, for the sake of that nation's exercising the 
right of taxing itself in a small one, are like bribes to a 
government for permission to plunder the people, as prac- 
tised under the Turkish policy. 

1 The fact " that bank stock is a tax gatherer," is only 
controverted by the assertion, that its dividends arise from 
the voluntary acts of individuals. " Toluntary and indivi- 
duals." Precisely the terms invariably resorted to, when- 
ever the object is to varnish over tyranny, pecuniary or per- 
sonal. Innocent men are imprisoned for life by tyranny, 
and a nation is fleeced hj monopoly and indirect taxation ; 
ought t\iQ indignation of justice to be quelled by being told, 
that these calamities only fail on individuals ? 

Most taxes, by which nations have been enslaved, are 
voluntary. By forbearing to drink liquors of any kind, or 
to make a deed, will, bond or bill of exchange, several tax- 
es in England may be avoided ; strictly then- their pay* 

/ 
/ 
/ 



30(5 BANKING. 

ment may be called voluntary; jet by these and similar 
taxes, England * s made the property of a monied aristo- 
cracy : and such taxes were felt in the United States as a 
regular progression towards the same system. Did neither 
of these countries sustain an injury, because the injury was 
iniiieted through the medium of voluntary taxation ? Is the 
sale of church paper, for enriching a clergy in this world, 
under pretence of excusing the sins of the buyer in the next, 
innoxious to mankind, because the traSek is voluntary? 

Whether the ignorance of the payer that he is taxed, so 
as to diminish or destroy the responsibility of a government 
to a nation, is a good or a bad argument in favour of indirect 
or voluntary taxes; it does not at least justify the impo- 
sition of such taxes for the sake of the argument : it does 
not prove, supposing it is a good stratagem to keep the people 
ignorant of the amount paid, that this amount ought to be 
given to corporations or private individuals ; it does not jus- 
tify the establishment of chambers of taxation, entrenched 
in impenetrable secrecy, with power to commission and 
scatter tax gatherers wherever they please. Whatever 
therefore can be urged in defence of indirect taxation for 
the benefit of a nation, leaves the collections made by bank- 
ing for the benefit of a chartered company, as defenceless as 
before. 

Admitting then, that the tax paid to banking, arises from 
the voluntary acts of individuals, it is by no means an argu- 
ment in its favour, stronger than the voluntary purchases 
of church paper or indulgences, in favour of that practice. 
The question would still remain, whether it is wise or just 
to suffer the passions of individuals to be used as channels, 
for drawing the wealth of a nation into a few hands. 

But it is denied that the profit. of banking belongs to the 
voluntary class of taxes ; and in the course of the following 
observations, we shall urge sundry reasons to shew, not only 
that it is a tax, but an inevitable tax. 

A, whom we will consider as representing the whole 
class of borrowers from a bank, must acquire a profit upon 



BANKING. 29? 

the use of the paper, equivalent to the interest he pays £ 
otherwise he could not borrow. From his continuing 
to borrow, it is evident that lie only advances the tax, and 
that it is reimbursed. This regular result is of the nature 
ef fate or necessity, and not of free will or discretion. The 
residue of a nation composes the class, throughout which, 
A, the borrowing class, circulates the paper, and it is una- 
ble to exercise any volition, adequate to the avoidance of 
his reimbursement. 

Excluding the idea of the class of borrowers, the cer- 
tainty and simplicity with which a hank inflicts and collects 
its profit, becomes still more visible. The operation is car- 
ried on between a nation and a banking corporation. The 
nation, through the channel of its members, exchanges a 
thing called credit, reduced to the form of bonds or notes 
for the payment of money, with the corporation, giving a 
boot, profit or difference, of about eight per centum per an- 
num, which the bank bond, note or credit, is arbitrarily 
made by law to be worth, beyond the national bond, note or 
credit. This effect is produced by subjecting the members of 
the nation to the payment of a compound interest to the cor- 
poration on their bonds, notes or credit, and absolving lbs 
corporation from the payment of any interest to the mem- 
bers of the nation, on its bonds, notes or credit ; and exhi- 
bits both thz inevitability of the tax, and a mode of its eoL* 
lection. 

It is asked, whether the borrowing class, may not for- 
bear to borrow, and whether this power of forbearance, is 
not an evidence, that the profit or income collected by bank- 
ing, proceeds from the voluntary act of individuals, Should 
bread and water be placed in abundance, before a hungry 
and thirsty multitude, could their eating and drinking be 
fairly said to be merely voluntary? Currency is the medi- 
um for exchanging necessaries. If gold and silver, the uni- 
versal medium, are legislated out of sight, all human wants 
unite to compel men to receive the tax collecting substi- 
tute. This is' banking. I5v the help of law it creates a 

39 



293 BANKING, 

necessity for its own currency ; and this extreme hunger m 
misnamed volition. 

The coin currency being expelled or drawn out of cir- 
culation, to an extent sufficient to create a necessity for some 
substitute, the power possessing the right of supplying and 
regulating that substitute, can inevitably so manage it, as 
to enrich itself by means of that necessity. It can supply 
the needed currency upon the terms, and in the quantities it 
pleases. And if fluctuations in currency, produced and 
managed by chartered monopolies, can affect price or va- 
lue, it follows, that through his income, his money, and 
his property, an individual is reached by the tax of this cur- 
rency, although he never borrowed or used it. Such suf- 
ferers do not exercise the least formality of volition. 

That the profit of banking is both a tax and an inevita- 
ble tax, is asserted by stockholders themselves, and the le- 
gislatures which grant charters. The wealth collected 
from a state by bank paper issued without it, is called a tri- 
bute ; and the remedy resorted to is to establish the tribute 
at home. Tyranny, and especially pecuniary oppression, 
has been generally most tolerable, the farther oif. It is 
certainly true as bankers assert, that a banking corporation 
in Maryland can tax Virginia by circulating its paper with- 
in that state, and of course it is also true, that a banking 
corporation in Virginia, can tax Virginia by the same 
means : the questions are, which can carry the oppression 
to the greatest extent ; the domestick or foreign corpora- 
tion ; and if the former, whether a greater, will remedy a 
less evil ? 

The argument in favour of repulsive banks, coincides in 
other points with the ideas we have expressed. Few or 
none of the notes coming from distant banks, admitted to 
have collected a tax in Virginia, were borrowed by the citi- 
zens of that state. Therefore, not the borrower, but the 
nation in which the notes circulate, pays the tax. If the 
borrower does not pay the tax, his will or pleasure that it 
shall be paid by others, does not make it a voluntary tax: 



BANKING, 29# 

nor entitle it even to that unsubstantial defence, As the 
circulator of the paper, lie inflicts and enhances the tax for 
his own nenefit. And the paver, not being the borrower, 
has no check over, or voi|tion in relation to the tax. It 
•will even be collected from individuals whom the paper 
never reaches, by its capacity to cause the value of proper- 
tj and even of coin itself, to fluctuate. 

Those who create new banks, to protect one state 
against the calamity of bank paper, coming from another, 
also assert that bank paper is a blessing. Bold contradic- 
tions sometimes hide truth, as vehemency does cowardice. 
"Will climate, or the names of stockholders have the effect 
of making bank paper sometimes a curse, at others a bles- 
sing ? Then a tribute ; now a mine of wealth ? Sincerity, 
as a citizen of Virginia, wishing to introduce banks, after 
having truly urged that Virginia paid a tax to stock hold- 
ers in other states, would have simply requested that the 
same individual tax might be transferred to Virginians. 
This would have brought the question fairly before the 
publick. Shall a tax be created for the sake of its expendi- 
ture at house ? Shall we foster separate sinecur interests 
at home, because a contribution towards their support 
abroad, is an evil ? And even these questions would have 
resulted in a very simple numerical calculation ; namely, 
whether it would be wise to extract a revenue from the 
state, payable by all its citizens except about one thousand. 
who .should receive it; in order to save half the sum, col- 
lected by citizens of other states, towards the payment of 
which these thousand also contributed ? This degree of 
sincerity might reasonably have been expected of stock it- 
self; but disinterestedness would have added, that the idea 
of one tax driving out the other, that is, of domestick bank 
paper, driving out hank paper issued without the authority 
of the state, was delusive. The extraneous paper, being 
possessed of the quality which collects the tax (currency or 
circulation) would continue to circulate and tax; and the 
remedy would therefore simply amount to an addition of a 



390 BANKING. 

new tax to the old. Such will continue to be the effect of 
this -remedy of opposing state paper to extraneous paper, 
until a state is saturated with tlie tax. A country is satu- 
rated with debt stock, when it can no longer pay its inte- 
rest, and with bank paper, when it can no longer pay its 
dividends. Whilst Virginia is able to pay the dividends of 
her domestiek stock, and the same contribution heretofore 
collected from her by extraneous paper, one payment will 
not abolish the other, but both will be made; and the crea- 
tion of a bank tax to expel a bank tax, only amounts to the 
ingenious idea, that one lash will cure the smart of another. 

The real remedy against strange bank paper is as visi- 
ble as light ; but it would lead to discussions, which native 
stock feared to encounter. If bank paper is a tax gatherer, 
one state may prohibit tYi& circulation of another's paper, 
with as much propriety, as it could expel tax gatherers in 
the shape of men, commissioned by another. No disguise, 
change of shape, or new dress, can bestow a right to tax, 
where no such right exists. But native stock felt its dilem- 
ma ; an expulsion of strange paper by law, because it was a 
tax, would have told the people by law, that native paper 
was also a tax. It preferred therefore the delusion of an 
opinion, that one tax would diminish another, as the basis of 
its own existence, to an inquiry, which might have termi- 
nated in the conclusion, that no legislature in the United 
States have a better right to tax their constituents for the 
benefit of banking corporations, than one state has to tax 
another state for the same purpose. 

Into this inquiry* let us proceed ; beginning with the right 
of Congress to tax the Union for the benefit of a bank cor- 
poration. Our arguments will be founded upon an opinion, 
that bank paper collects a revenue. Supposing its payment 
to be unavoidable, an apportionment by the census is requir- 
ed by our constitutional policy ; allotting it to any other 
description of tax, a bank in each state, or some distribu- 
tion of stock, is equally required by the mandate of unifor- 
mity ; and both these constitutional principles are grossly 



BANKING. 301 

violated, by a bank so located, as to enrich one state, and tax 
another. Considered as a non-descript species of revenue* 
no power to inflict it on the publiek, or to bestow it on pri- 
vate people, is given to Congress* 

In the appropriation, as in the apportionment Or unifor- 
mity of revenue, will be found a limitation of the power 
of Congress. An unconstitutional mode of taxing, may in- 
flict partial injuries upon particular states, but an uncon- 
stitutional application of revenue, may be ruinous to all. It 
is inconceivable that the constitution, whilst so cautiously 
providing against the first evil, should have overlooked the 
second. The loosest security against it, is deposited in a 
limitation of the revenue collected, to the « common de- 
fence and general welfare of the United States f and the 
fight of Congress to appropriate a revenue collected by bank 
paper, for the defence or welfare of a corporation, is visibly 
beyond this wide definition. 

Under the idea " of carrying the powers given into ex- 
ecution," could Congress have invested the parliament of 
England, with the privileges granted to the bank of the 
United States ? Such a charter would have bestowed on 
England the object of her war upon us, revenue. In what 
part of the constitution is to he found a prohibition upon 
Congress to bestow a revenue upon the British parliament? 
or a power to bestow one on chartered companies? A con- 
struction necessary to invest Congress with one power must 
include the other. 

Testimony applicable to the question exists without and 
■within the constitution. A rejection of a proposal for em- 
powering Congress to establish a bank by the convention, is 
the evidence without the constitution ; and a special power 
to grant charters 6i to authors and inventors," is the evi- 
dence within it, uniting in a condemnation of the construc- 
tion, which claims for Congress an unlimited power of bes- 
towing revenue upon corporations, and literally forbidding 
that mode of doing it called banking. A special and limit- 
ed power excludes the idea of a general and unlimited pow- 
er, which includes the special one. 



30£ BANKING* 

In most or all of the state constitutions, diploma, char* 
ter and corporation, are condemned as inimical to liberty, 
and as usurpations upon man's natural rights. In none, is 
a power given to the legislature, to bestow a revenue of any 
kind at the national expense upon corporations. 

The constitution of Massachusetts declares, that " no 
" man, or corporation, or association of men have any other 
" title to obtain advantages or particular and exclusive pri- 
« vileges distinct from those of the community, than what 
*' arises from the consideration of services rendered the 
" publick ;" and that of Virginia, " that no man or set of 
« men, are entitled to exclusive or separate emoluments or 
« privileges from the community, but in consideration of 
« publiek services." 

The words " common defence and general welfare," 
twice used in the constitution of the United States, contain 
the principle advanced in the two last quotations. They are 
the exact contraries to « particular, exclusive or separate 
privileges or welfare." 

The constitutions quoted, literally enrolling " exclu- 
sive privileges and emoluments" in the list of tyrannies, 
proceed to expound the words " publick services." These 
only are admitted to possess a legitimate title " to exclusive 
privileges and emoluments." Had legislatures been left at 
liberty to extend these words to whatever they should deem 
to he publick service, they might have created and endow- 
ed with exclusive privileges and emoluments, a corporation 
for introducing monarchy, as well as for introducing the 
Aristocracy of paper stock, under the idea, that it would 
serve the publick. 

But their constitutional exposition is unequivocal. The 
privileges and emoluments allowed to publick services, are 
neither « inheritable or transmissible to children, descend- 
ants or relations," because " publick services" being ** in 
nature" neither hereditary or transmissible, so exclusive 
transmissible privileges or emoluments were incompatible 
with th& principles of liberty, This construction of the 



feAXKItfGh 305 

terms, by the instrument in which they are used, restrieta 
legislative power bv a definition, far short of nn unfettered 
imagination, licensed to pronounce whatever comports with 
its fancy, its interest or its plots, to he serviceable to the 
publick. It unequivocally dissevers the privileges or emo- 
luments allowed to publick services, from whatever may he 
sold, or transmitted to relations, like hank stock. And ex- 
pounds these terms, as well as their equivalents, " general 
welfare," according to their original unsophisticated inten- 
tion. 

The governments of the union, Massachusetts and Vir- 
ginia, have granted banking charters, conveying saleable, 
transferable and descendible exclusive privileges and emo- 
luments : and have thus opened by precedent a way to every 
conceivable power, by usurping the mother of all powers, that 
of distributing wealth. This may be given to foreigners, 
whether plebeians, nobles or kings, and held both in peace 
and in war, as rewards " for publick services" or « for 
(i common defence and general welfare," by bank « exclu- 
" sive privileges and emoluments." The word «< common," 
requires a membership with the community, and the king, 
nobility, clergy and paper aristocracy of England, holding 
bank stock in America, in a war between England pnd the 
United States, must therefore be considered, as rendering 
publick services, and advancing our defence and welfare, to 
bring the appropriation of money to their use by the bank 
law, within the meaning of this expression. If such fictions 
are able to overturn constitutional principles, the idea of a 
constitution capable of restraining legislatures, is itself a 
fiction. 

It is admitted that this part of our reasoning is of little 
weight. If banking is a publick benefit, constitutional pro- 
hibitions ought not to deprive the publick of that benefit ; 
only the constitutions ought to be amended to come at it. 
Banking ought therefore to be considered, as it aifects na- 
tions morally and politically, and not by any verbal test. 
But it cannot be overlooked, that although banking was 



§04 SASTKIffg, 

rejected and excluded by the framers of the general consti- 
tution ; and although many eminent and learned men long 
denied to congress a power to incorporate banks : yet it has 
never been judicially questioned; and all the state legisla- 
tures have found it in the words « publick services," after 
congress discovered it larking under the expression " gene- 
ral welfare." Individuals and entire parties* to avast ex- 
tent, have loudly reprobated* and calmly defended this pow- 
er ; and the folly or knavery of those who first represented 
it as an usurpation dangerous to free government, and af- 
terwards seized upon it, ought to be a memorial to nations 
against reposing an excessive degree of confidence in parties 
er individuals ; in judges or legislatures ; in governments or 
patriots. 

The history of man proves that all will often avail them- 
selves of the precedents established by their predecessors* 
and reprobated by themselves. Every precedent, however 
elearly demonstrated to be unconstitutional and tending 
" towards monarchy and an iron government" by a party 
out of power, will be held sacred hy the same party in it * 
and those who clearly discerned the injustice and impolicy 
of enriching and strengthening federalists by bank or debt 
stock, at the publick expense, will seldom refuse to receive 
a similar sinecure. In short, a power in the individuals 
who compose legislatures, to ilsh up wealth from the peo- 
ple, by nets of their own weaving, whatever be the names 
of such nets, will corrupt legislative, executive and judi- 
cial publick servants, by whatever systems constituted ; and 
convert patriots from the best friends, into the most dan- 
gerous foes of free, equal and just principles of civil liberty. 
Let us return more particularly to our subject. It will 
be remembered, that we have endeavoured to prove, that a 
revenue is collected from nations by banking. Our know- 
ledge of that currency ,*callcd paper money, will suggest new 
arguments to this point. Long experience has demonstrat 
ed to America, that a paper currency will never retain its 
value* unless it is attended bv a tax adequate to its redemp- 



BANKING. 305 

tion. We will suppose, however untrue it may be, that 
every bank contains coin to the amount of its capital, let 
this is a sum, inferior to the aggregate of its stock, its notes, 
and its dividends. If the coin is only mortgaged for the 
two last items, yet these greatly exceed its amount, and 
this excess forms a mass of paper currency, for which the 
coin is no security. Without a security adequate to its re- 
demption, we know it to be a law of paper currencies to 
depreciate ; and as this surplus of hank paper beyond the 
ability of the deposited coin to redeem, does not depreciate, 
its credit must be supported by some other security ; that 
security is the tax, which banking collects ; a tax, not only 
-sufficing for the redemption and credit of this species of pa- 
per currency, but supplying a redundancy, sufficient in some- 
eases to add one half of its numerical value to the coin de- 
posited as stock. 

Of the correctness of this reasoning, and of the nature of 
hanking, an ancient practice in Pennsylvania, furnishes a de- 
monstration. That state, whilst a province, became a 
banker. It made and loaned a paper currency, at a mode- 
rate interest. The interest paid for it to the state, was a 
tax, applied to publick use. This is banking, stript of its 
ambiguity. Simply an indirect mode of taxation, success- 
fully used to raise national revenue. The idea that it was 
not a tax, because individuals borrowed the money, and col- 
lected and paid the tax, would be an assertion in every view 
less tenable, than that an impost upon ordinary licences was 
not a tax, because such licences were voluntarily taken and 
confined to a few persons, the reimbursement derived from 
the privilege in both cases, transfers the tax from the indi- 
viduals to the publick. 

The differences between the Pennsylvania!! and ihe pre- 
sent mode of banking, are, that then the tax was paid by 
individuals to the publick ; now it is paid by the publick to 
individuals. Then it was paid to assist industry, and defray 
publick expenses ; now to enrich idleness, and supply the 
means of luxury to a separate interest. Then the publick 

40 



required a- knowledge of the amount paid, from its own re- 
presentatives ; now it pays an amount unknown, to corpora- 
tions in which it is not represented. Then the publick re- 
eeived live or six per centum of individuals for paper cur- 
rency i now it pays ten or twelve per centum to individuals 
for the same currency. That species of paper currency 
could not corrupt legislatures or nurture aristocracy ; this 
must do both. That being dealt out by the publick interest, 
and not by the interest of monopoly, circulated through a 
nation like coin, liable to no artificial fluctuation, and begat 
fail?, useful and honest competition ; this being regulated by 
a separate interest, is made to cause prices to fluctuate 
with a view to personal and local emolument. That did not 
monopolize and expel specie ; this commences with the first 
measure, and terminates with the second, so as to make It- 
self indispensably necessary. 

But it is said that the Pennsylvania^ species of bank cur- 
rency will fail in its credit. It is never to be forgotten, 
that credit is an ally of safety and factions, and not of peril 
and nations. That it is bold and flourishing in security, 
and fearful and withering in danger, A small degree of 
danger being about to assail the credit of the bank of Eng- 
land^ the corporation influenced government to protect it 
against the payment of its debts to the nation °, a protection* 
which would not withstand the shock of war, invasion, su- 
perior force and disaster, as long as did the currency of na- 
tional credit in France and America. 

National credit includes the credit of every individual ; 
a part cannot be more solid than the whole ; and if the whole 
is lost, the parts must also be lost, A calamity which 
threatens to overwhelm a nation, destroys confidence among 
individuals. Bank credit depends upon bonds given by in- 
dividuals. Pennsylvania!! credit was supported by the same 
pledge, and by the additional guarantees of landed security 
and national faith. A calamity, capable of destroying the 
bonds, mortgages and national faith, three sponsors for 

msylyanlan bank currency, will destroy tlie single sj 



3BAKKING. 307 

sor for chartered bank currency. And a nation will defend 
its own credit with more animation, whilst it diminishes 
their taxes, by bringing them revenue ; than it will bank 
credit, which increases their taxes, without bringing them 
revenue. National credit would arouse bravery, interest 
and patriotism, like other property ; but bank and fund- 
ing credit, cannot inspire a nation with patriotism, because 
it is a tax gatherer, which zealously engages in the wars 
of ambition, avarice and orders, and flees from imminent 
national danger. A rapacious coward cannot make a na- 
tion brave. 

If the credit of a whole nation is perfidious, it only ag- 
gravates the absurdity of purchasing a portion of its own 
perfidious credit, at an enormous price ; and of expecting 
to cure the perfidy of the whole, by attaching to a part, the 
additional excitements towards treachery, arising from ex- 
elusive privilege and separate interest. These never had 
any business in society, but to corrupt governments and 
plunder nations. They are exactly the remedy, universal- 
ly proposed by the enemies of the principle of self-govern- 
ment, for this imaginary evil of national perfidy to itself, 
National credit, say they, is perfidious, Resort therefore 
to corporation, vendible, monopolized and successional cre- 
dit, as a much better shield for liberty. Equally perfidious,, 
in their opinion, is national wisdom, and therefore they re- 
commend titled, hereditary and successional wisdom, as al- 
so a better shield for liberty. Such opinions are consistent. 
But how can those be reconciled, which assert, that treach- 
ery to liberty forever lurks in hereditary, successional and 
monopolized wisdom, and that her safety consists in vendi- 
ble, successional and monopolized credit ? 

Pennsylvania!! credit, produces the benefit of a revenue, 
as national wisdom does that of freedom ; and corporation 
credit produces taxation, as hereditary wisdom does tyran- 
ny. As credit can produce revenue, it is property, and it 
Will be considered, whether as such, it can under our noli 
cy be thrown into a state of monopoly, or disposed of by 



308 BANKING. 

elusive charter, as districts and inhabitants are in Russia, 
or branches of commerce in England. If a monopoly of the 
wine trade, cannot be chartered to a corporation, will cre- 
dit, which covers every branch of commerce, admit of a 
^ate of monopoly ? 

The value of credit, as property, appears evidently in the 
price it sells for. A nation, by giving away its credit, loses 
what Pennsylvania sold at six per centum. By erecting 
corporations to monopolize or expel its specie, to make 
room for their credit, it loses the use of this specie worth 
six per centum more. And necessity then compels it to buy 
of these corporations the credit it gave to them, at the price 
of ten or twelve per centum upon their stock. These items 
shew that credit is either property, or a machine for trans- 
ferring property, more effectual than that made of here- 
ditary and exclusive wisdom. Both machines have been 
invented for this purpose. The hereditary magnifies the 
defects incident to human government in its best form, to 
hide its own greater vices. The credit machine, in strict 
imitation of this example, seizes upon the errours of paper 
money, as reproaches against national credit ; and hides un- 
der them its own greater aptitude to shrink from danger, 
and also its capacities for corrupting governments and plun- 
dering nations. Of the bad features in the face of paper- 
money, corporation credit makes two masks, one to hide its 
own hideousness, the other to hide the benefits of national 
credit. 

If all the banks in the United States circulate fifty mil- 
lions of paper dollars, five millions of real property will- 
thereby be collected. And if national credit, instead of 
corporation credit, had issued the same sum in the mode 
successfully practised in Pennsylvania, a revenue of five 
millions would have been received instead of being paid, 
making a difference of ten millions annually to the nation. 
Are these great sums of wealth no property ? If they are 
property, to whom do they belong ? If they belong to any 
body, can they be transferred by laws and charters, under a 
policy, which considers property as sacred ? 



BANKING $0$ 

This plain fact enables us to compare accurately, our sys- 
tem of monopolized and transmissible credit, with a system 
of monopolized and transmissible wisdom. By this compari- 
son it will be divulged, that the pecuniary oppression of pri- 
vileged credit, is far greater than that of privileged wisdom ; 
and hence it is a just inference, that its avarice is also great- 
er. Avarice breeds the treacheries of privilege against li- 
berty. Unprivileged or national wisdom is its friend, be- 
cause such wisdom can see no object to betray, for the gra- 
tification of avarice or ambition ; privileged or corporation 
wisdom is its f6e, because this species of wisdom can see 
such an object. "We will select an expensive system of mo- 
nopolized wisdom, to illustrate these ideas. The king of 
England receives for his wisdom, one million of pounds ster- 
ling, equivalent to the annual labour of fifty thousand men. 
The labour of fifty thousand men, is equivalent to the sub- 
sistence of two hundred thousand people. For the. subsist* 
ence of two hundred thousand people, this man renders the 
« publick service'' of a king, and pays also the salaries of 
sundry other publick servants. His exclusive emolument 
therefore, however exorbitant, is within the principle of the 
constitutions lately quoted. The banks in the United States 
receive for their credit, at least five millions of dollars an- 
nually, equal to one million one hundred and twenty-fiv® 
thousand pounds sterling ; to the annual labour of fifty-fe 
thousand five hundred working men ; and to the subsistence 
of two hundred and twenty-five thousand people. They are 
neither publick servants, nor do they pay the salaries of pub- 
lick servants. Confining the payers for the king's wisdom 
to Britain, the expense is divided among twelve millions, 
and extending the computation to all his dominions, it may 
possibly reach to twenty. Therefore the proportion of sub- 
sistence drawn by the king's privileged and monopolized 
wisdom from labour in England, is less than that draw* 
from labour by privileged and monopolized credit in Arne 
rica. 



MO SANEIWS, 

When We behold an honest indignation against the system 
of privileged and monopolized wisdom, and an honest ap- 
probation of the system of privileged and monopolized cre- 
dit, existing in the same mind, why should we be proud of 
the human intellect ? 

The pecuniary sufferings of nations from banking may be 
exhibited with some accuracy by figures, and though figures 
cannot exhibit its drafts upon their political principles, we 
may conclude with almost equal certainty, that a separate 
factitious interest, will not preserve a free government in 
America, because it has never done so in any other country. 
Monopoly, like other evils, takes refuge under some good. 
It attempts to include within its scope, the acquisitions of 
talents and industry, and to confound them with those of 
legal .fraud ; and to consider private property, roads and 
canals, whence arise good effects, as of the same nature 
with hierarchy, nobility, banks, "or any species of legal se- 
parate interest, though productive only of political oppres- 
sion or pecuniary fraud. 

Admitting private property, however incorrectly, to be 
a species of monopoly, its effects, such as subsistence, com- 
fort, and a multitude of physical benefits, draw a distinct line 
between it and the fraud or force of hierarchical and feudal 
usurpations. These, instead of possessing a common nature 
with private property, diminish or defeat its benefits. 

Government, considered as a monopoly, has also been cal- 
led a necessary evil, because it has been almost universally 
planted in its evil and not in its good qualities. A mo- 
nopoly is erected, calculated to awaken the avarice and 
ambition of its members ; these evil qualities are according- 
ly awakened ; they resort to force and fraud for their own 
gratification ; and such monopolies beget the civil tyranny, 
denominated a necessary evil. 

But as private property may be planted in the good or 
in the evil qualities of monopoly, so may a government > 
hy banishing fraud or force, as means of acquiring private 
property, its protection begets beneficial effects) and hy 



BASKItftt. Mi 

forbearing to excite avarice and ambition by fraudulent 
laws and separate interests, government will produce hu- 
man happiness and comfort, and be considered as a necessa- 
ry good. 

It has been our policy, so to divide power, and diminish 
the excitements of avarice and ambition, as to wring but of 
its soul the poisons arising from the evil qualities of mono- 
poly ; laws to foster these qualities, labour to revive what 
that policy labours to destroy. 

If monopoly is made up of good and evil qualities ; and 
if our policy has planted our government in its good quali- 
ties, a revolution is effected by transplanting it into its evil 
qualities. The constitutional corporation is endeavoured 
to be cleansed of avarice and ambition, the scourges of 
mankind ; and legal corporations, having the first, which 
begets the other, breathed into them, as their vital prin- 
ciple, cannot constitute the same species of govern- 
ment. 

These inimical principles cannot in nature subsist to- 
gether ; one must subdue, reform or contaminate the other. 
In England a paper system has contaminated the govern- 
ment ; here, the only argument which can be urged against 
the same process and result, is, that the pure principles of 
our constitutional corporations, will reform the vicious 
principles of our legal corporations, created by them- 
selves. 

Towards this experiment, the constitutional and legal 
corporations are mixed up together. The constitutions and 
laws then beginfjto solicit the suffrages of this compound. 
•• Adhere to us," say the constitutions, " and we will take 
« care that neither your ambition nor avarice shall be gra- 
« thied." « Come over to us," say the laws, « and we will 
•< gratify both." Will the audience make a separate in- 
terest, which bestows on it exclusive wealth and power, 
subservient to the general interest, which rigidly refuses te 
feed it with either. 



*12 BANKING, 

If it is a moral truth, that mankind prefer themselves to 
others, then it is a moral certainty, that members, both of 
the government and of the corporation, will prefer the in- 
terest of the corporation to the interest of the nation. As 
a member of the government, I am met constantly by divi- 
sion and responsibility ; the money I collect from the peo- 
ple, must be accounted for and applied to their use ; and 
both my power and compensation is dependent on their will. 
As a member of the separate interest, I tax without limita- 
tion ; I receive without account ; I apply to my own use i 
I am dependent only on my own pleasure ; and I acquire 
the power following wealth, unsubjeeted to the publick suf- 
frage. By taking the side of my own interest, I influence 
the government in my own favour. Ey taking the side of 
the national interest, I sacrifice my own. As all separate 
Interests prefer themselves, and bend governments into a 
subserviency to their designs ; so one neither responsible, 
sior weakened by division, nor made up of distinct indepen- 
dent interests, by means of different departments and un- 
connected offices ; will act with a degree of concert arid 
force, for its own aggrandizement, which would be im- 
practicable to the several governments in America. The 
banking power is therefore a stronger, as well as a richer 
power, than the civil. The holders of both will use the lat- 
ter as an ally of the former ; the two powers will unite in 
one, and all the checks invented to control the civil power, 
will be silently lost in the illimitable influence of the stock 
power. A power of regulating property is engendered, of 
a capacity to enslave nations surpassing a power to regulate 
the press, as far as an influence over a whole nation, or 
great factions, exceeds one over a poor author. 

There is no occasion that one should be a political Lin- 
s*seus, to discover the class of political systems, to which or- 
ders or separate interests belong. When such influence a 
government, publick opinion cannot also influence it. They 
do not belong to that class of political systems, which they 
destroy. Their essence is minority, and their principle? 



BANKING* SIS 

must participate of their essence ; and if it is good govern- 
ment to consult the national interest, they must uniformly 
be opposed to good government, because they constantly 
consult their own interest, 

Without closely estimating the political influence of the 
species of separate interest called banking, we can at a 
glance discover, that a power to give and receive charters, 
to draw wealth from the people, and to share in it, and to 
obtain adherents at the publick expense, is a great power. 
It is that which I have called legislative patronage. 

This excessive power* like all others, will act upon the 
moral qualities of human nature. Its pecuniary seductive- 
ness, is exactly opposed to the policy, supposed by all our 
constitutions to be most likely to awaken the good moral 
qualities of human nature ; and exactly such, as have con- 
stantly awakened its eviL Nations, resorting to elective 
and representative forms of government, consider a strict 
similitude betAveen the interest of the legislature and of the 
people, as the chief security for fidelity. They have never 
divined these interests, by establishing a difference, to the 
extent of five millions annually, to be paid by the one, and 
received in money or power by the other : no free con- 
stitution has ever declared, that a legislator might legislate 
wealth to himself, and taxes to the people ; and no man in big 
senses ever thinks of securing the honesty of an agent. \j $ 
powerful temptation to hetmy him. Even the king of Eng- 
land cannot himself pass a law, to inflict the million he re- 
ceives ; whilst the legislators of these states might receive 
the five millions they inflict by banking, and do r ceive a 
considerable portion of it. On the contrary, all our consti- 
tutions consider it as a sacred principle, that legislators 
should really, and not nominally, be affected by the good or 
evil dispensed by law, as the nation is affected. Asa ma- 
jority of a nation cannot be bankers, the opening of a sub- 
scription to all is a formality, the futility of which is de- 
monstrable in the certain and necessary result of this tor- 
mality. That, invariably places the legislator-stockholder 



Hi BABTKIX0. 

in a minority, And of course lie must be affected by e?e~ 
ry law which may affect stock ; not as the nation are affect- 
ed, but as this minority is affected. Executive patronage 
would become similar to legislative, if the president could 
both create offices, and bestow them on himself or his 
creatures, as the latter bestows charters. 

Whenever legislatures, or men in power of any denomi- 
nation, can receive charters, exclusive privileges or emolu- 
ments which they create, they will incline to make them 
good gifts. Accordingly, bank stock is so manufactured as 
to sell at an advance, often as high as fifty per centum. 
Thus a legislator who creates, subscribes for and sells stock, 
converts by his own legal magick, every dollar he can raise, 
into nine shillings. This is undoubtedly a good thing for 
himself,* if a miracle can be performed, and if laws for 
.enriching orders, without labour or industry of any kind, 
will enrich the rest of the people, then it may be a good 
thing also for his constituents. 

If it is, let nations rejoice, and look for the speedy ac- 
complishment of their hitherto frustrated hopes, that op- 
pression would cease. It will be both useless and absurd, 
that avarice should any longer pursue its tyrannical mea- 
sures, after a mode is discovered of gratifying its lust, with- 
out putting the rest of a nation to any expense. Still more 
wonderful is this discovery • better than costless ; it is said 
to enrich a nation, by enriching a paper interest. Oh hap- 
piness unlooked for ! No longer remains then a motive for 
that mass of patronage and taxation, by which nations are 
enslaved. This beautiful system of banking enriches stock- 
holders by dividends and the people by bank notes. Patron- 
age is received and returned with mutual civility and proiit. 
And avarice is at length converted into a blessing for in- 
dustry. 

Every word of this reverie must be credited, to justify 
banking. But although we may wish that it was as true 
as it is pleasant, yet it requires a very strong faith indeed 
to believe, that this political alchymy is less fraudulent 



BANKING. 31 h 

than the chemical. One proposes to make gold out of some- 
thing ; the other out of nothing. 

, If England held all the bank stoek of the union, the fur- 
nace of this new species of alchymy would burst, " as if a 
bolt of thunder had been driven through" the states, and 
all its promises would vanish, " in fumo," not before the re- 
fined satire of Ben Johnson, but before common sense. It 
would be instantly seen, that England, the stockholder, was 
enriched by the dividends, and America taxed and impover- 
ished by the notes. By filling the place of England with 
three or four thousand native and foreign stockholders, the 
place of the people is not altered. Such of them as are le- 
gislators, will vote upon political questions, exactly as Eng- 
land would, if she held our stock and could legislate for us. 
The ground which sustains this argument, is that upon 
which banking has spread from state to state ; namely, that 
taxes, and not gold for publick benefit, are forged in the fur- 
nace of this new alchymy. Whether taxes are repealed 
by transferring their appropriation from A to B, from a 
foreign country to a native legislator, is left to the sagacity 
of the reader. 

Patronage is an instrument by which governments cor- 
rupt a faction to take part with them against nations, and 
thus gradually acquire more power than the people ever 
gave. If this instrument is obtained by foreign conquest, as 
in the acquisition of India by England, the people still suf- 
fer by the unconstitutional power it confers ; it is infi- 
nitely more calamitous to a nation, when gotten by do- 
mestick operations. 

Had the governments of the United States, bestowed up- 
on themselves and their partisans, offices to the value of five 
millions annually, the patronage would have been the same 
with that created by banking ; which welds the corporation 
to the government, and the government to the corporation, 
against the people, like sinecure offices to the same amount. 
For this vast and boundless mode of acquiring power, there 
is no allowance in any constitution. It is a great weight, 



31t> BANKING. 

which wa^ never thrown into the scales, by those who made 
them ; an it be thrown in by law, and leave the division of 
pow er between a nation and its government, unaltered ? 

In another view, the patronage created by banking^ 
spreads out in the United States, far beyond any influence 
capable of being produced, by creating offices of the value 
jist mentioned. The general government may influence 
th vhoJe fabrick? by means of a power to regulate the 
places of deposijte of the general taxes, and by regulations 
as to the paper which may be received in payment. Tins 
influence may reach state legislatures as stockholders, and 
convert the best barrier devised by the principle of division, 
asrainst usurpation and consolidation, into an insidious 
and secret instrument* for the ends it was intended to ob- 
struct. 

A slight interest is a bad mirror for reflecting justice* 
but a great one is a camera obscura inverting right and 
wrong. Through this medium, stockholding legislators 
will discover, that it is just to retain their annuities, by any 
com iliaices for which the people, not themselves, suffer $ 
and a silent revolution, which will secure or increase these 
annuities, will appear to them to be necessary for the pub- 
lick good ? 

Against this obvious danger, we are consoled by being 
told, that the separate banking interest, is not a titled or- 
der ; that if titles were added to its wealth, our constitu- 
tions, like the walls of Jericho, would be overset by the 
noise ; but that unless the aristocracy shall discover its pro- 
gress by its shouts, they are safe. 

On the contrary, a separate interest is more dangerous, 
if it can create, sustain and enrich itself without being de- 
signated, than if it cannot; if it assails by mine and sap, 
than if it assails by the sound of drums. If Lords could 
create and enrich Lords by law, the government would soon 
become a feudal aristocracy. If bishops could create and 
enrich bishops by law, the government would presently be- 
come an hierarchical aristocracy. So if stockholders can 



BANKING. 31? 

by law make and enrich stockholder*, the government of 
course becomes a paper aristocracy. It was the title or 
badge of the hierarchical and feudal orders in England, 
which by designating the members, afforded the means oi 
limiting their progress ; and if either of these aristocracies 
could have possessed itself, unseen of legislative power, it 
would have legislated itself into permanent tyranny. If our 
constitutions required that every stockholder should be 
clothed in a surplice, that he might be known and excluded 
from legislative power, or only allowed a portion of it, as 
belonging to a separate aristoeratieai interest, he would, like 
the lord or the bishop, be thereby rendered less dangerous. 
Thus checked or balanced, these orders are considered by 
republicans as a bad political system ; unchecked or unba- 
lanced, even monarchists allow them to be execrable ; they 
admit of no control without a title or badge ; and the paper 
interest is designated by neither. 

That a separate untitled interest is more powerful and 
dangerous than a separate titled interest, is a fact so notori- 
ous as to supersede an occasion for argument. The untitled 
paper interest in England, has made prisoners of the two 
titled orders, uses them sometimes as clerks in his counting 
house, at others as jackals to hunt its prey, and at all times 
to pronounce its will for law; this it has gradually effected, 
because it could act secretly ; it is a warriour invisible to 
his adversary, or a conjurer invisible to the crowd he de- 
frauds. 

In the history of our forefathers, we recognise three po- 
litical beasts, feeding at different periods upon their lives, li- 
berties and properties. Those called hierarchical and feu- 
dal aristocracy, to say the worst of them, are now the in- 
struments of the third. Protect us, Heaven ! we exclaim, 
against these monsters, inert, subdued and far away from 
us ! Oh what a beautiful creature is here ! we add • upon 
beholding a whelp of the third, so strong as to have swam 
into our country across the Atlantic; and the infatuation 
concludes with a sincere commiseration of the people of 



318 SAS&Iffti. 

England, on account of the misery with which they are- 
loaded by the mother of this identical whelp. Our mistake 
in estimating titled nobility and paper stock, is exactly that 
of the mouse, terrified with the cock and charmed with the 
cat. 

Representation ceases to be an effect of election, whene- 
ver a representative can draw wealth from his own laws, by 
means either of office, sinecure or monopoly. His income 
under the law, being greater than his expense, his interest 
is adverse to the interest of the people, who pay the tax or 
income which he receives. A power to take from a nation 
and give to itself, is a strict definition of civilized tyranny. 
A legislator cannot be guided by the interest, both of the 
minority and majority ; of the exclusive and general inter- 
est ; of the receiver and payer of the tax. He will be guided 
by the interest to which he belongs ; if he is a receiver of 
the tax, he will tax. 

Established banks exclaim that others would be perni- 
cious ; just as one established or chartered religion ex- 
claims against chartering another ; or as patricians disap- 
proved of ennobling plebeians. But though the established 
bank contends that others would be pernicious, an applica- 
tion for a new bank, as loudly insists that the old one is a 
hateful monopoly, which a new one will destroy. Destroy 
in the same manner, as a noble order of fifty members 
would be destroyed, overeating ii\y more, and as the op- 
pression resulting from one titled sect, would be destroyed 
by titling another. 

This falling out is managed with mutual embarrass- 
ment ; the parties are obliged to conceal the true cause of 1 
quarrel, and to put it upon the ground of partialities to in- 
dividuals in loans of bank currency. As if the new 7 bank 
was not as capable of partiality as the old. The evil of 
bestowing on the quality, partiality, the distribution of na- 
tional currency, is proposed to be remedied, by extending 
the power of partiality. Not this partiality, but the divi- 
dends or tax, is the real object of dispute, The old bank 



BAKING. 319 

I 

knows that its paper is a tax, subject, like other taxes, to tho 
limitation of national ability, anil it wishes to exhaust this 
ability itself; but the proposed bank wishes to come in 
for a share of it ; yet neither, even when under theobliga- 
tion of legislative responsibility, is ever heard to make to 
the people these honest confessions. 

This true ground of quarrel between established and 
proposed banks, confesses the correctness of the opinion, 
which supposes that funded stock and bank stock, are both 
national debt ; and that interest and dividends are both paid 
by taxing the nation. By new stock, the evil in both cases 
is cured in the same way. So long as national ability 
to pay interest or dividends suffices to meet the new stock, 
it is an additional tax upon that ability ; whenever either 
species of stock exceeds this ability, either will depreciate. 
Both, therefore, equally imply a debtor and creditor. But 
in a legislature made up of old stockholders, and intended 
stockholders, such an idea of the subject will be suppressed, 
and a compromise elfected between the parties upon self- 
ish grounds, not upon principles of national interest. 

It is easy to comprehend the possibility of a form of go- 
vernment, capable of being correctly denominated/ an elec- 
tive aristocracy ; and to predict, without much foresight, 
that the decay of the principles of cur policy, will commence 
with that form. It is produced by whatever will defeat an 
honest and faithful sympathy between a nation mid its re- 
presentatives. Such a case is illustrated by the house of 
commons of England. That house gains a power by its pa- 
per system, which is able to proclaim its corruption, and 
to defy reform. Such a case is the natural offspring of an 
union between an elective legislature and a separate inter- 
est. Can a stronger cement for this union than banking be 
discovered ? It gratifies the avarice and ambition of the 
confederates, without expelling from the senate house, dis- 
closing acquisitions, or attracting punishment. 

The division of powers is an essential quality of our 
policy and constitutions. That between the people and the 



government is destroyed, by a power in the government ta 
increase its share, by its own laws ; as is that also between 
the general and state governments, if either distributee can 
increase its quota of power by law. By banks, governments 
may create factions, which will adhere to them against the 
people, or to one section of our policy, against another. 
With these instruments, the general or state governments 
might disorder the distribution of power between themselves 
and the people, and between each other. To both, enlist- 
ments by lucrative charters will furnish mercenary troops, 
and mercenary troops, wielding either stork or swords 
were never considered as good guardians of liberty. Char- 
ters and banks will become the chief objects of state legis- 
lation, and if twenty legislatures can outstrip one in this ma- 
nufacture, the general government may lose its power, and 
the calamities of a dissolved union will folloAv. These will 
ravage the states,until they ripen the publick mind for the in- 
troduction of a steady tyranny by some military adventurer ; 
and the catastrophe of the drama will he the effect of ex- 
changing our system of genuine representation, cautious 
division, and effectual responsibility, for the monopoly and 
corruption of a system of banking, charters and paper. 

There is utility in these baleful auguries. They may 
induce the nation to examine omens, and enable it to defeat 
fulfilment. They deserve in this view, all the indulgence 
of honest intention. 

States may see an advantage m excluding the currency 
of banks created by Congress. Large states may exclude 
that of small. Exclusions of this kind will enhance the va- 
lue of state stock. This will be just, because no equality 
in the profit made by bank paper, can exist between states 
of an unequal size, with an equal and unlimited right to send 
out this tax-gatherer. The collections under the laws of 
each state, ought at least to correspond with the domes- 
tick fields for circulation. The same reason which induces 
a large state to emit rival paper, may induce it to expel ri- 
valry from its own dominion. It would be evidently unjust 



that Delaware should be enriched by taxing*the union with 
a mass of bank paper ; therefore it will be prevented. The 
bank tax of Virginia, has the same motive for driving away 
any interloping bank tax, as for introducing itself; money 
will be made by it. Cannot you discern, reader, stuff 
for weaving a tissue of avarice, ambition, rivalry and ha- 
tred, which has no ingredient for allaying human passions, 
restraining human vices or preventing human slaughter ? 
View it steadily, and you will behold our inestimable state 
governments, shrinking into charter traders ; and contriv- 
ing paper navigation acts to plunder or repel plunder, by 
means of paper currency, with the same spirit and intention 
in regard to other states., which the trade navigation act of 
England breathes, in regard to other countries. 

To avoid these calamities, our hope rests upon the mo- 
deration of charter and monopoly. The extent of this mo- 
deration, is equivalent to that exhibited by the invocation, 
required of their subjects by Persian monarchs. Charters 
command their subjects to exclaim, " Oh monopoly! live as 
long as the law pleases/' K the law can bestow existence* 
for one year, it may for a million. It may give perpetual 
life to whatever metaphysical being it can create; and char- 
ter is so moderate, as to claim a right to live out the whole 
life allowed by law. Once created, it pretends to indepen- 
dence of its God, law ; to independence of law's God, con^ 
stitution ; and to independence of constitution's God, the 
nation. 

These pretensions are not extravagant ; for if a govern- 
ment is so contrived, as that its members can take the 
charters which they make, these charters Will live as long 
as the government lives. A maker of laws, to enrich him- 
self, which cannot be repealed, is a far greater power than 
a maker of constitutions. Constitutions are tenants at will ; 
the tenure of charters is jot even limited by good behaviour, 
or liable to be annulled by impeachment and conviction of 
treason. A legislature, by charters here, and charters 
there, can so wedge ??p present or future ages, that the long 



322 BANKING. 

possession of these tenants for years will become a set- 
tled right? and the remainder-man will forget his rever- 
sion. 

A power to make irrepealable law charters, is above res- 
ponsibility, and independent of its constituent. The cor- 
rection of a corrupt or ruinous measure, comprises all the 
essence and benefit of responsibility. A change of repre- 
sentatives, without this correction, is a barren formality. 
It is even impolitick, unless followed by a correction of the 
mischief which suggested the change. New representatives 
will be incited by the preservation of a pecuniary abuse, 
to repeat it for their own emolument ; if they are not per- 
mitted to destroy it, they will think it right to reimburse 
themselves by a new charter, for their sufferings under the 
old. 

The infatuation opposed to the reasoning, which disclos- 
es the destruction of responsibility and legislative integrity, 
lurking in the system of charter and banking, is an unexam- 
ined idea, that our constitutions contain some charm, some 
magical influence, which will preserve liberty, by the agency 
of avaricious charter-making and charter-taking repre- 
sentatives. History produces no instance of national hap- 
piness, under a legislature, corrupted by the most sordid 
passion, of which human nature is susceptible. Legisla- 
tive purity might preserve liberty and happiness, under con- 
stitutions otherwise defective ; but the most perfect consti- 
tutions otherwise, could not preserve liberty and happiness, 
with legislative corruption. 

In all ages legal beings have been invented, which con- 
tend that man was made for them, and not they for him. 
Having both escaped from his service, and converted him 
into their servant, they|invest themselves with a drapery of 
glittering fictions, to dazzle him into submission. Hierar- 
chy, though always defended by whatever could inspire re- 
verence, and often dressed in the robes of religion, has at 
length fallen before the solid principle, « that civil institu- 
tions belong to nations and that, nations do not belong to 



BANKING. 32* 

civil institutions f* whilst avarice presumes to assert the re- 
verse of this doctrine, which religion was unable to defend. 
It pretends that man was created for law charters, tho' not 
for laAV churches ; and that it is equally a sacrilege to dis- 
continue the former, as to revive the latter. Thus parties 
and factions measure their principles by their interest, and 
assert or deny the same proposition, like lawyers for fees. 
Hence they censure their predecessors for obtaining wealth, 
in modes which they use themselves, aud pretend to be 
guided by different principles, whilst they worship at the 
same shrine. Just as a Pope, had the conversion of Rome 
to Christianity failed, would have become the high priest of 
Jupiter, and practised the idolatry he had loudly condemned, 
to increase his revenue, splendour and power. Or does 
this charter doctrine advance the designs of the leaders of 
opposite parlies, as a good revenue might have done those 
of the leaders of opposite religions. 

The ability of a corrupt legislature to make a form of 
government or constitution worse, and finally to overturn it, 
is illustrated, not only m England, but in the history of 
Rome. Two of the means used by the patricians to effect 
this end, were usury and an usurpation of national con- 
quests. Compound usury and an usurpation of national cre- 
dit, are two of the means used by the system of banking. 
The dexterity of the present age, has sharpened the edges 
of these patrician weapons, and varnished and lengthened 
their blades, so as to dazzle and to strike a whole nation. 
The patricians enslaved individuals with usury ; banking, 
nations. The patricians usurped and drew wealth from fo- 
reign conquests : banking usurps national credit, and draws 
wealth from domestick territory. The patricians by their 
means, gained wealth so slowly, that it required an opera- 
tion of several centuries to corrupt and destroy the govern- 
ment ; stock can collect wealth by credit so rapidly, as to 
shorten the process to a few years. 

Five millions drawn annually from a nation itself by a 
separate interest, will with more certainty enervate and 



p%to BANKING. 

enlave it, than if the same sum was drawn from their cob- 
quered enemies ; because toiling for others, and receiving 
the earnings of others without toil, is a double momentum 
towards these results ; whereas a tribute paid by foreigners, 
as debasing only by luxury, and not by tyranny also, is a 
single one. Profit without labour, will be preferred to la- 
bour with loss. The effort of the best informed will be to 
get out of the nation into the separate interest, to avc *d the 
labour with loss, and to gain the profit without labou; 

Nations have for three thousand years been doomed to 
oppression, by an opinion that they had not capacity to go- 
yern themselves ; are they doomed to suffer it for another 
three thousand years, from an opinion that they are unable 
to give themselves a paper currency, if it should be useful ? 
In the first case, the nation is persuaded that it is a fool, but 
that a few individuals are wise ; in the second, that it is a 
pauper, but that a few individuals are rich. The last idea 
is even ludicrous, as the sole object of banking is to tax a 
rich nation to enrich poor individuals. 

After a patient trial of charter privilege and monopo- 
ly for three thousand years, almost at the moment they are 
rejected as poison to civil and religious liberty, we are told 
that they are wholesome aliment for commerce. It is not 
surprising that self interest should tell us this $ but it is, 
that self-interest should believe it, and recommence the fair- 
est, most pattern, and most expensive experiment which was 
ever made. After another tedious term of rueful experi- 
ence, monopoly will again exclaim, that it confesses itself to 
be pernicious, when applied to commerce and credit, just as 
it now confesses the same thing, in relation to religion and 
civil power, but that in some new form it is a blessing ; and 
the experiment ought then, with as much reason as now, to 
be recommenced. 

It is to elude the discovery of its enmity to civil and re~ 
ligio s liberty, that monopoly confesses the change in its old 
forms, hoping under the candour of this confession, to get 
|qio operation in a new form. Admitted ii» the stupendous 



Backing. 325 

ibrm of a paper currency, it becomes instantly connected 
with civil government, and civil and religious liberty is set- 
tled by experience, to be uniformly the victim of a con* 
aexion between a lucrative monopoly, and government 
iu any form. It is not a new experiment, therefore, which 
we are trying. It is only charter and state instead of church 
and state. Even supposing the principle of monopoly can 
he introduced by banking, without its infecting the civil go- 
vernment ; the wisdom of planting some parts of our poli« 
cy in a monopoly of civil rights, and others in their free* 
dom, is still questionable. These principles are irreconcila- 
ble enemies. Mr* Adams's history of orders abundantly 
proves, that they are never formed in the same community, 
but in a state of war | and that the war never terminates, 
but in a victory on the side of one of the combatants. 

If it would be dangerous to republican government, for 
the President to make officers of monarchists, is it sale for 
legislatures to make monarchists of citizens by debt and 
bank stock, or by any species of monopoly ? Republicans, 
turned into kings, bishops, lords or stockholders, are' i o 
longer republicans. Neither bishops nor bankers are ex- 
empted from the physiological qualities of man. Less than 
a million annually received by the officers of government, is 
supposed to expose them to the effect o 'these qualities, and 
excludes them ficm legislatures; iive times as r i I: 
received by bankers, is supposed to exempt them f 
the effect of the same qualities, and conducts them 
into legislatures, where they shield themselves from 
taxation ; and from one exclusive privilege, extract ano- 
ther. Yet banking creates treasuries for usurpation ; a 
dUision of wealth is a necessary auxiliary to a divi- 
sion of power; and an accumulation of the former, a stride 
towards rendering the latter useless. That it can also 
create treasuries for national defence, is the countervail j - 
cd in answer to this argument, And this countervail itself 
encourages the dissipation of governments • en< them 

with a dangerous degree of pecuniary independence of the 



S26 Nanking. 

nation ; stakes the national safety upon the capriciousness 
and selfish views of every predominant party ; involves the 
necessity of nurturing at the general expense a minor inte- 
rest, and terminates in the state of England. The quackery 
of defending nations by banking, is a mine of wealth to an 
order of bankers, as the quackery of defending them by feu- 
dal tenures, was to the order of nobles. Give us all the 
land, said the feudal barons, and we will defend you. Give 
us all the money and credit, say the bankers, and we will do 
it. In both cases, nations pay the hire, and do the work 
themselves. Just as the quackery of salvation was a mine 
of wealth to the priesthood, and purchased no/thing for the 
laity. What mystery can be more absurd, than the doctrine 
that an entire nation cannot defend itself, but that it can be 
defended, by the device of converting a few of its members 
into bankers i 

Mr. Adams asserts, and republicans admit, that a poli- 
cy which confers civil power on one separate interest, is 
more imperfect than one which divides it among three. It 
is better to have no predominant separate interest, or more 
than one. None is freedom, one is tyranny, and several 
may be a mixture of both. If the king and the house of 
commons, were cut out of the English government, the no- 
bility would be tyrants. By aggrandizing the nobility with 
a certain degree of wealth, the king and the house of com- 
mons would be nearly or entirely expunged from the Eng- 
lish form of government. By aggrandizing a banking inte- 
rest co-extensively, the same result ensues. The history of 
feudal barons and religious titularies proves, that wealth, 
and not title, conveys power. 

Election advances and rivets the power of a wealthy or- 
der. In England, election, so far from producing an order 
or interest to counterpoise the stock order or interest, pro- 
duces the most effective instrumeut for advancing its wealth 
at the expense of the nation. Could any better means have 
been devised for increasing the income of the stock order, 
than a house of commons ? If the eligibility of the king or 



"BANKING. 327 

the nobles to the house of commons, would have destroyed 
the theory of checks and balances, although these interests 
might be avoided by the people in elections ; we cannot fail 
to discern the reason, why the eligibility of the stock interest 
to that house, (which cannot be avoided by the people) con- 
verts it into an instrument for effecting, what it was intended 
to prevent ; namely, the predominance of a separate inter- 
est over the national interest. Is a corruption, poison- 
ous to the British theory, salutary to the American ? 

Though an order or distinct interest is compounded of 
many members, it constitutes only one body, guided by self- 
interest. Whenever in a combat between two men, a les; 
or an arm of one shall desert to the other, then a member of 
the stock interest may be expected to desert to the national 
interest. Add to the cement of wealth a mass of political 
power, gotten by election, and a Colossus rises up, animat- 
ed by one mind, who easily makes the havock of the national 
interest required by his own, because its members are never 
united by one mind, and lie about, so scattered and disjoint- 
ed, that he picks up and uses them as weapons for assailing 
the body they belong to. The capacity of a paper interest 
in England, to make instruments of orators, kings, lords 
and commons, evinces its gigantick power. 

What ! exclaims both the friend and the foe, to publick 
good ; shall we have no corporations, no colleges, no 
turnpikes, no canals, because they are separate inter* 
ests ? Do not charter and privilege strew the face of a 
country with palaces and plenty ? Yes, and with huts and 
penury. 

With equal propriety it might be asked, if we can have 
no magistrates, unless these magistrates are kings or no- 
bles ? The assertion that these beget liberty, made by the 
admirers of monarchy, is equivalent to the assertion, that 
paper orders beget national prosperity, made by the lovers 
of stock. As the first is asserted of the most inveterate ene- 
mies to liberty, the other is asserted of an inveterate 
enemy to property. Magistrates may be so moulded as lo 



S2& BANKING. 

turn out despots : charters, as to turn out thieves ; oppres- 
sion, under pretence of protecting ; and fraud, under pre- 
tence of enriching, are not novelties. Magistrates and se- 
parate interests, moulded to advance the puhiick good, 
are blessings ; but for gratifying ambition or avarice, are 
curses. 

Although the king of England has but few domains, ret 
the English civil power, is that generated by a rich govern- 
ment and a poor people ; whilst the reverse is superficially 
the case. The phenomenon is resolved by considering the 
power carried by wealth to the paper, patronage and churcb 
separate interests, as given by the government to itself, at 
the expense of the people ; and demonstrates by experiment 
a mode of usurpation. Walpole strengthened the English 
government by stock and taxes. Five millions annual in- 
come to bank stockolders, create a more alarming degree of 
power, than if the five millions had been given to one man ; 
it makes a multitude ardent in the cause of fraud and op- 
pression, instead of one ; therefore Walpole, to strengthen a 
king, made a faction by stock, in preference to enriching 
the king himself. If our government (including the state 
sections of it) had given five or six millions annually to it- 
self, every man would have perceived its accession of power ; 
but when it dispenses the same sum in the mode thought by 
Walpole to obtain the most power, the accession is hard- 
ly seen by any, and is utterly imperceptible to the re- 
ceivers. 

It being unquestionably true, that an organization of 
property by law, is equivalent to an organization of power 
by law, as Mr. Adams and Lord Shaftsbury assert, it fol- 
lows, either that the governments of the United Stages have 
not aright to exercise the first, or that they have a right to 
exercise the second. If it is not our polk-y that a govern- 
ment can increase its own power by its own will, and if law9 
for enriching factitious interests will increase its pow- 
er, by bribing partisans, such laws are subversive of our 
policy. 



BANKING. 329 

This indirect mode of stealing power from nations, com- 
pensates them with vices for the wealth it purloins. It cor- 
rupts a passion to which mankind are indebted for the most 
perfect state of society, and its blessings, namely, a love of 
property. In either extreme, like many other passions ne- 
cessary to our happiness, it becomes pernicious. Enthusiasm 
tick philosophers, falling into one, hy attempting to.eradicate 
a love of property, have laid the axe to the root of society. 
Such attempts, though always unsuccessful, are always 
mischievous. By covering a love of property with odium* 
it unfits inexperienced young men for an association, of 
which this love is the chief ligament. By depreciating the 
motive of the sanction, the sanction itself is weakened. Ac- 
cordingly, having rooted out a love of property from the 
mind, law and contracts lose their influence, and a commu- 
nity of goods, unsuccessfully attempted even by religious 
zeal, terminates philosophical fanaticism. Before the ca- 
tastrophe arrives, pecuniary distress, begotten hy a contempt 
of property, prevents men from being good, and is active in 
forming bad citizens ; and not unfrequently converts a me- 
taphysical saint, into a practical devil. He arraigns justice 
of avarice ; he adjudges it to be sordid and base in a creditor 
to demand payment * he breaks contracts, because they are 
to be fulfilled by money ; and as most civil rights are mea- 
sured by money, he tramples upon most. His theory being 
repugnant to the principles of society, he violates them at 
every step ; he cannot live by rules he hates and breaks j 
and he is gradually moulded by the bitter expiations to 
which he has condemned himself by a contempt of property, 
into a malignant misanthrope, an abandoned scoundrel, or 
an unprincipled and ferocious demagogue. He who dissi- 
pates his property, dissipates also his virtue and honour. 

This extreme however is so far outstript by its opposite, 
in generating human misery, that language recoils from 
the horrour of a just description. Separate interests, goaded 
on by au avarice, awakened by unjust laws, and rendered un 
conscious of guilt, by the sanction of the statute book, nave 

43 



550 BANKING 

filled the old world with crimes, and perverted the primitive 
end of society to secure property? by making it the instru- 
ment for its invasion. Is the new world destined to eopv 
this old process, and suffer its dispensations ? 

This essay has been written for the purpose of inquir- 
ing by what interest mankind ought to be governed, natural 
and general, or artificial and particular. It considers in- 
dustry, elfort and talents, as constituting the first class, and 
law and charters, for enriching individuals or factions, as con- 
stituting the second. Without pursuing the details to which 
the subject would lead, it has selected a few of the latter, to 
illustrate its reasoning, but not as containing a history or 
exhibition of the whole class of artificial and particular inte- 
rests, by which mankind have been oppressed. In this se- 
lection, feudal, hierarchical and stock, are the particular 
interests, of whose history most use has been made, as they 
have succeeded each other in England. The stock tyrant, 
the present metropolitan of the benefice called Britain, is 
said to be fair and just, because those who chose to do so, 
might subscribe to banks or loans. To the arguments used 
in another place for detecting this fallacy, the following are 
added. The mode by which a tyrant succeeds to his tyran- 
ny* cannot convert oppression into justice. If offices, pro- 
ductive of mischief to a nation, were like bank shares ex- 
posed to sale, could the purchasers justify the mischief, by 
urging, that any one who had money, might have purchas- 
ed I Several Romans purchased the empire. Could 
they justify a right to tyrannize, because any other per- 
son, rich enough, might have also purchased ? Could 
a lottery for distributing the titles and privileges of an aris- 
tocratick nobility be fair, because all those of a nation able 
to pay for them, might buy tickets ? Bid the neighing of 
Darius's horse make his government legitimate, because se 
ven persons possessed tickets in the lottery, or would it have 
been legitimate, if seven thousand had shared in the 
chance ? 



KASKIN& '33i 

Among the instruments of oppression, tlie heredita- 
ry are most excusable and least oppressive, and those bought 
the least excusable and most oppressive. The former are 
thrust by birth into tyranny ; the latter purchase it with a 
deliberate malice against justice and liberty. The mis- 
chiefs of the hereditary tyrant are limited by his physical 
imbecilities ; those of a bought separate interest, are ex- 
tended by a bouudless moral energy. If a title by birth, 
by lot or by purchase, would not have justified or softened 
the tyranny of a Tiberius, a Caligula, or a Nero, how can a 
title by either justify or soften the tyranny of the more last- 
ing and extended feudal, hierarchical or stock tyranny ? 

One tyrant may thank God that he is not another ty- 
rant. Banking may say that it is not a hierarchy or noble 
order. It will admit that charters for establishing such or- 
ders arc criminal, and contend for the innocence of its own ; 
just as the nobility and bishops of France, once held mercan- 
tile charters in the highest contempt, and their own in the 
highest respect. When Europe was torn to pieces by the 
principle of bestowing exclusive wealth and privileges on 
religious sects, each sect contended that the remedy for the 
evil, lay in its own possession of this wealth and these pri- 
vileges. It was found however bv the United States, to lie- 
in the abrogation of them all. Mr. Adams's book, by chang- 
ing a few names, might be easily converted from a system 
for balancing civil orders against each other, into one for 
balancing religious sects in the same way; and when the 
most powerful of these sects, were intriguing, fighting and 
negoeiating to find out this balar.ee of wealth and power 
among themselves, those who expected to gain by the doc- 
trine, would aihnv it to be classical. The balance of religi- 
ous sects, however, could never be found, and the privileges 
bestowed upon them by law, charter or treaty, were only ap 
pies of discord thrown into society. Such apples are the 
privileges of civil sects. These inflame the zeal for wealth, 
as those did the zeal for religion. The former zeal burn? 



332 BANKING. 

now, as did the latter some centuries past ; and civil privi- 
leged sects will regard the publick happiness, as religions did 
then. The principle, universally agreed in the United 
States to be inconsistent with religious happiness, cannot ad- 
vance civil. On the contrary, civil privileges are likely to 
produce religious misery, as religious privileges have pro- 
duced civil misery, and we must probably have both privileg- 
ed, civil and religious sects, or neither. 

Wealth, religion and truth, ashy law established, com- 
pound a political system, of strict Athanasian orthodoxy ; it 
does not contain three principles, but only one. And wealthy 
religion and truth, established by industry, conscience and 
free inquiry, is the opposite system, founded also in one 
principle. 

Wealth, established by law, violates the principle, 
which induced the American states to wage war with Bri- 
tain. It separates the imposer from the payer of taxes. No 
nation would tax itself to enrich an order or separate inter- 
est. When therefore a nation is so taxed, it must proceed 
from the power of the order itself, which is invariably the 
imposer and receiver of the tax ; whilst the rest of the na 
tion is the payer. 

No interest, whose acquisitions are the effect of law, and 
not of labour, can pay any portion of a tax. Publick ofii- 
cers, who receive salaries, pay no taxes, and therefore are 
not allowed to impose them. If one half of these salaries 
were taken from them by the name of a tax, they would 
neither be taxed, nor entitled upon that ground to partici- 
pate in the imposition of taxes ; because the law only re- 
sumes what it gave, and takes nothing which it did not give ; 
it would only be a diminution of salary for services. In 
like manner, bankers ought not to inflict the payment of the 
wealth they extract, and if this wealth given by law, was 
resumed by law, it would only be a cessation of a naked be- 
nevolence 5 and a worse ground for claiming a right to im- 
pose taxes, than a diminution of a salary for services. 



Mankind are united hy the necessity for subsistence in a 
common interest. Those who furnish the subsistence., pay 
all the taxes. As subsistence flows from the earth, that may 
be called the mother of men, liable to make all the disburse- 
ments they need. Hence, all, or nearly all taxes, must be 
ultimately paid by agriculture, and ought of course to be in- 
flicted by her, if the doctrine is true, that the payer is the 
only just imposer of taxes. Agriculture cannot be partial, 
because she cannot shift the tax from her own shoulders. 
From her other interests diverge, like rays from the sun, 
but she is the centre of them all. If one of these rays usurps 
from the parent sun, the distribution of his light, it may be 
induced to darken another, for the purpose of increasing the 
splendour of its own ; as a child who makes the will of a 
parent, disinherits his brethren for his own advantage. And 
so legislation flowing from, or influenced by any particular 
interest, in whatever form, has never failed to rob other in- 
terests. 

Perhaps no separate interest would constitute a less 
exceptionable legislator, than commerce, on account of its 
close connexion with agriculture 1 and manufactures ; and 
yet, without considering the complicated means she could 
practise, to make other interests, and even that of agricul- 
ture, subservient to hers; a simple -power of converting all 
other interests into insurers of her adventures, giving them 
the losses, and keeping herself the profits, would be suffi- 
ciently tyrannical. 

If commerce would be the least exceptionable separate 
interest, as a legislator* or as influencing legislation, be- 
cause of her connexion with agriculture and manufactures, 
paper stock must be the most exceptionable, because it has 
no connexion with either. It is not one of those rays di- 
verging from the sun, or one of those interests arising from 
the earth, capable of being softened by the affinities of a 
common ancestor. Belonging to the family of cunning, it 
isinexorable to the family of the earth, and favorable to its 
h relations. These two families, in all their branches. 



334* BANKING. 

are natural enemies. Whenever any member of the family 
of artificial interests gets into the camp of the other family, 
... it lets in its comrades, and plunders to the uttermost 
Among them, paper stock has been most conspicuous for 
such feats. In England, it has allied itself with its kindred, 
gotten into the camp, and plundered the nation in the last 
century beyond the magnifying conception of lunacy itself. 
Above ten hundred millions of pounds sterling are now sup- 
posed to be due to loan and bank stock, to which the pay- 
ments made during a century must be added, to find the 
amount of which the family of the earth, has been stript by 
the family of law. In the United States, speculation, as it 
was called, bought of the family of the earth an hundred 
millions at one shilling in the pound, and then compelled it 
to re-purchase it at twenty. This family of the law soon dis- 
closed its aifection for its relations, monarchy and aristocracy. 
Here too bank stock is already annually extracting from 
the family of the earth, of labour and of property, five times 
as much as the civil government of the United States costs. 
Already, like the ancient hierarchy, it pretends that to tax 
it would be sacrilege. And already, like a tyrant prepar- 
ing punishment for treason, it has proposed to inflict death 
upon forgery, where the system of mildness has been car- 
ried so far, as to subject murder in the second degree to im- 
prisonment only. Fear for its wealth will induce this 
branch, like all of the same race, to let in its kindred. 

The revival of the charter of the bank of the United 
States, was denied upon the ground of the political power 
conveyed by bank stock to the subjects of England ; and the 
highest authority declared in this denial, that less than ten 
millions of it would invest foreigners with a pernicious por- 
tion of such power. Natives will derive still more power 
from stock, because their whole mass of social rights are 
enlisted as its ally and partisan. There is no provision in 
our constitutions, for a legislative conveyance of power by 
bank stock, either to citizens or foreigners. This decision, 
and the talents which produced it, proclaimed, that hanl^ 



BACKING. 33 £ 

stock conveys political power. It proclaimed, that less 
than ten millions of it made a few foreigners, under all the 
disadvantages of that character, dangerous ; but the same 
authority is silent as to the danger to be apprehended from 
an hundred millions of bank stock, in the hands of people to 
whom every branch of the government is open. The Unit- 
ed States bank stock held by the English possessed the usual 
transferable quality, but no one contended that this quality 
was any security against the pernicious political power an- 
nexed to bank stock. If the United States had originally 
created a government of bank stock, and annexed tine entire 
political power to an hundred millions or any other amount 
of it, a transferable quality in this stock, would not have ex- 
punged the aristoeratical qualities of such a government. 
Had A assigned a share of this stock to B, the latter would 
have occupied the place of the former in this government, 
just as a feudal son did that of his dead father. Nor is a 
transfer of the power annexed to bank stock, from one citi- 
zen to another, a better security against that power, than was 
a transfer of the stock of the United L'trJes* bank, from one 
Englishman to another, against the polities 1 rower deriv- 
ed from stock by Englishmen. 

The similitude between a stock and a feudal aristocraey 
is perfect. Money is made the basis of political power in 
one ; land, irr the other. The power is not annexed to mo- 
ney in general, but to a portion of it, moulded by law into 
stock ; as in the feudal form it is not annexed to land in ge- 
neral, but to a portion of it, moulded by law into lordships. 
Those having money but no stock, are excluded from politi- 
cal power in a stock aristocracy ; as those are, having land 
but no seigniory, in a feudal one. In both, though money 
and land possess the same intrinsick value by whomsoever 
held, portions of each are by the artifice of law, made more 
valuable than other portions naturally of the same value ; 
and of course more powerful. This identical essence of mo- 
nopoly, and sole cause of aristocraey, is the same ia both 
cases. If there are two portions of people, each possessing 



330 B-A-NKISTG, 

a million of dollars, and one has its" money converted by 
charter into stock, whilst the same favour is refused to 
the other ; the difference between them as to social in- 
fluence, power or rights, though less visible, is really ihe 
same, as between the same portions possessing an equal 
quantity of land, after the lands of one portion are moulded 
lay lav/ into lordships, whilst no favour is granted to those 
of the other. However such monopolies may be decorated 
by the trappings of ingenuity, the artifices of fraud, or the 
oblations of folly, both exhibit the simple ease of endowing 
by law a selected portion of property, either money or land, 
With a better income and more social power, than is de- 
rived by Us holders from a far greater portion of both, not 
so endowed. 

This argument suffers no injury from the consideration, 
that our constitutions have not expressly annexed political 
power to bank slock ; because, if it naturally imbibes poli- 
tical power, such indirect acquisitions derived from ordinary 
and not conventional legislation, however tortured, can never 
be reconciled with the policy of the United States, if it is 
founded in good, just and equal moral or political princi- 
ples ; as to that, the difference between the treason of 
the sword or of the pen by which it is destroyed, will mere= 
ly consist in the degrees of pain inflicted by the respective 
operations. Banking has only appeared - to any extent in 
Genoa, Venice, Holland and England. Does it bring its let- 
ters of recommendation from these monarchies or aristocra- 
cies, because it has homogeniously coalesced with them? 
Yes, these experiments, by disclosing the fatal truth, that 
banking could enrich an order, awakened an order here to 
be enriched. It advertised itself as a talisman against po- 
verty, and obtained proselytes both of clergy and laity, or 
of those to whom its promises were truths, and of those to 
whom they were falsehoods. Fraud ever promises riches 
in heaven or upon earth, and hence it has been necessary in 
this essay to trace it through the chiefforms it has assumed, 
in the first, the second and third ages, to shew the innate 



BANKING. 387 

similitude of these forms to each other, and the inconsistency 
of all, with the civil policy of the United States, The sub- 
ject ought to be fairly explained, that the nation may judge 
whether monopoly shall destroy its constitutional principles, 
or these principles, monopoly. If circumstances propelled 
the United States, like France, into a form of government 
too free or too honest for the national character ; or if the 
wages of banking, like the pay of armies, have already 
moulded our legislatures into mercenary troops, it may be 
lost to avoid an unavailing contest by a tacit submission $ 
but if a publick exists in the United States, able to sustain 
a publick interest, a greater quantity of human happiness 
will be produced, by preferring that interest, to a monopoly 
in the hands of a very few. 

This essay does not aspire to the honour of proposing a 
new political system. It only endeavours to ascertain the 
principles of old ones, and to shew that the publick will 
and publick interest, and an exclusive will and an artificial 
interest, cannot possibly constitute a governing power, in 
union. That these moral beings, are the only natural poli- 
tical enemies capable of existing, and are doomed by the au- 
thor of human nature to eternal warfare. That no artifi- 
cial balance can appease this eternal hostility, any more 
than it could reconcile good and evil. That hence, and not 
from a defective balance, Mr. Adams has never been able to 
find these opposite principles quietly poising each other. 
And that the United States, by creating a pecuniary sepa- 
rate interest, capable of entering the list with publick inter- 
est, have proclaimed a warfare precisely of that nature, 
which lias demolished human liberty universally. In this 
age of avarice, a nation which creates paper stock and mo- 
nied monopoly, but guards itself against feudal tenures, se- 
cures its liberty as wisely, as one would have done in the 
fourteenth century, by creating feudal tenures, and guard- 
ing itself against paper stock. 

The gross and humiliating delusion by whieh banking 
lives, is, « that the family of industry, are enriched by the 

4i 



338 BANKING, 

Idle family of ar^Hfee;? England displays the profound 
wisdom of land and labour in outwitting stock, in this trial 
of skill. Stock now receives from them nearly double the 
amount of the whole price of all the exported labour of the 
nation ; that is about forty millions, for enhancing the va- 
hie of its exported labour, which sells for twenty. The 
United States will not yet supply us with this perfect demon- 
stration, but the progress towards the same point has been as 
rapid as was the progress of England, from the commence- 
ment of her stock career. In debt and bank stock we only 
pay about ten millions of dollars annually, to obtain the en- 
hancement of price or value, which we are taught to ex- 
pect from stock, on about forty millions worth of exported 
labour. If stock benefits land and labour, then it is a mis- 
fortune to us only to pay it twenty-live per centum on our 
exports, and we ought immediately to create a sufficient 
quantity to acquire the English blessing of paying it two 
hundred. An exact statistical knowledge of the enemy's 
country, being disclosed by the unerring medium of figures, 
we must resort to fate to account for the blindness of man- 
kind. 

All separate factitious interests pretend that they bene- 
fit nations in some mode, too intricate to be investigated by 
the mass of mankind* Thus hierarchies and noble orders 
yet retain a spacious existence. Of all such pretences, bank- 
ing resorts to the least intricate. It gravely tells nations 
that it enriches them by taking their money ; that by emp- 
tying a quart bottle of half its contents, the residue will be- 
come three pints. If a nation possessed a certain quantity 
of bread, would it be increased by depositing it in the 
hands of a corporation* ant! paying ten per centum for re- 
ceiving the residue on the credit of the corporation breach 
notes ? Would an annual deduction of one tenth part of the 
bread, increase the quantity, and make the nation more se- 
cure against famine ? Will an annual appropriation of 
one tenth of its money to the use of a similar corporation, 
increase its wealth an i secure a nation against poverty 1 



BANKING. 339 

The first species of fraud would be reprobated with univer- 
sal indignation ; the second is deliberately practised. Is 
the belly wiser than the head ? A monopoly of money 
reaches all human wants, comforts, luxuries and passions. 
Every oppressive government is produced by some of the 
progeny of monopoly. If an individual of this family, has 
too often enabled tyrants to oppress nations, can the genus, 
covering, corrupting and commanding the whole species, en. 
rich them ? 

If the monopoly of banking will rob a nation of its liber- 
ty, by corrupting or usurping the government, it is almost 
superfluous to prove, that it will rob it of its properly also ; 
because every separate interest acquiring one, has uniform- 
ly gotten the other* To the latter inquiry we shall howe- 
ver more particularly advert, since the pecuniary effects of 
banking will admit of reasoning so nearly connected with 
figures, as to exhibit mathematical certainty. The truth 
or errour of the assertion, " that banks add to the price or 
value of the product of labour," is capable of being exhibit- 
ed to the eye. 

The reader will recollect the difference between price 
and value. Local price will settle its own level, in relation 
to local currency. If the price of agricultural products, 
consumed at home, had been increased by banking, home 
manufactures so consumed, would have experienced a pro- 
portional increase. No speeies of labour, will suffer itself 
to be sacrificed by bank currency, for the benefit of another. 
Each will compensate itself, by enhancing its price up to its 
natural leveL If therefore bank paper could produce local 
disorders, in the balance of labour against labour, the effect 
could not be permanent ; and a re-adjustment of the level of 
price, would place the several departments of labour in the 
same relative situation, as to value, even if the price of 
eachjiad been doubled. To disarrange the natural rela- 
tion between the value of labour, ascertained by fair com- 
petition, would wickedly oppress, unfairly to enrich ; and 
damp the spirit of industry. And an advancement of the 



340 BANKING. 

price of labour, pari passu, would produce neither gain nor 
loss. It follows, that if bank paper did advance prices, 
nothing would be gained by a nation, in regard to its do- 
mestick commerce ; and of course, that it can gain nothing 
by banking, except through the medium of its exported 
labour. 

All the ground therefore upon which banking can ope- 
rate, as to an increase of value, lies between the domestick 
and foreign price of exported labour. If wheat is worth 
eight shillings here, and ten shillings in the foreign market? 
the influence of bank currency upon the price of wheat, 
would be limited to two shillings. Beyond these confines? 
its power to enhance price by exciting competition, cannot 
extend ,• and therefore an enhancement within this narrow 
restriction, comprises the entire retribution within the pow- 
er of banking to make, for the revenue it extracts. 

Supposing there exist banks in the United States, ope- 
rating upon a capital, real or imaginary, of fifty millions of 
dollars, and receiving a revenue, including dividends, per- 
quisites and expenses, of ten per centum, or live millions an- 
nually ; this five millions is the sum paid by the United 
States, for the supposed benefit of having the price of ex- 
portable labour enhanced within the limitations just stated. 
We have before proved that an evil and not a benefit, is con- 
ferred on a country, by disordering or raising the prices of 
labour consumed at home. 

Supposing the exportable labour of the United States, 
to be forty millions annually, then they pay five millions or 
twelve and an half per centum to banks, upon the total ol 
the subject, the real value of which can possibly be effected 
by banking ; and if the difference between the value of this 
subject, here and abroad, should not amount to twelve and 
an half per centum, as is generally the case, it is evi- 
dent, that a pecuniary loss results to a nation by bank- 
ing, because the price paid for it, exceeds, any possible en- 
hancement of value within its power. 



BANKING* Jil 

Out of the same fund, that is, the difference in a specie 
value, between the price of exported labour here and 
abroad, the whole amount of mercantile profit is to be ta- 
ken; because competition cannot be so excited by banking, 
as to destroy this profit, without destroying commerce ; nor 
is it conceive )le that mercantile calculation could be sode 
ceived, as ardently to patronise a system productive of such 
a consequence. If this mercantile profit amounts also to 
twelve and an half per centum on exported labour, it raises 
the deduction under a bank currency, upon forty millions of 
this subject, to twenty-live per centum, or ten millions an- 
nually. From this expense, there is no deduction pretend- 
ed, except the enhancement of value by exciting- mercantile 
competition. To reimburse it, banking, through (his boast- 
ed competition, must save to the nation five millions an- 
nually, out of a mercantile profit of five. At whatever rate 
mercantile profit is computed, the advantage of mercantile 
competition must come out of this fund. Would an aWe 
calculator give six per centum for bank paper, if it was 
true that it deprived him of one, two, three, four or fivi- 
millions annually, and bestowed it on 'labour ? 

The difference between the home and foreign price, as 
the ground for banking to operate on, is yet farther nar- 
rowed, by the deductions of freight, commission arid insur- 
ance. These cannot be destroyed by any competition it. 
may excite; on the contrary, if banking did increase the 
price of labour consumed at home, it would increase thistle 
duction, and narrow still more the ground for its operation 
en exported labour. 

In fact, banking, instead of exciting competition, mush 
like duties, fail on the commodity, and fail to lessen mer- 
cantile profit. The merchant advances (he price paid for 
its currency, as he advances duties, lie must not only be 
reimbursed the one, in the price of the commodities he : 
as he is reimbursed the other, in the price of the comnmdi 
ties he sells, but he must also gain a profit on both his ad 
vancements, otherwise he would be as inimical as h 



S4i2 BANKING. 

friendly, to imposts and banking. Duties add to nominal 
price ; do they also enrich nations ? 

The inefRcacy of banking for enhancing the value of the 
products of labour, was demonstrated in the United States 
by an embargo. The exportable, instantly lost two-thirds 
of its price, without any change in the bank currency. And 
the price of the consumable, was instantly regulated by the 
homedemandjjustasthe demasd of foreign markets, when 
these markets are open, regulates the price of export- 
able labour. Could banking have regulated value or 
even price, the exact regulation of both, by need, 
would not have appeared in this complete experiment, of an 
intercourse between its currency and the products of labour, 
upon a theatre, isolated by this embargo against every spe- 
cies of foreign influences 

Its impotence for enhancing value, between the people of 
the same country, is not however conclusive evidence of its 
effects between distinct nations. Seeing that price and va- 
lue are regulated at home by the market or need, we may 
certainly conclude that products consumed abroad, will be 
regulated by the same standard, and therefore the only ques- 
tion is, in what mode banking affects these regulators, 
This is done by increasing or diminishing the labour of a 
country, employed in providing for human wants. If it in- 
creases this labour, it diminishes ; if it diminishes this la- 
bour, it increases the price of its products. It is certaiu 
that banking produces the latter effect, to the extent of the 
labour employed in its operations, and of that enabled to live 
in idleness upon the income of its stock. So far as it thus 
enhances the price or value of labour at home, it is a mode 
of doing it, precisely equivalent to effecting the same end 
by neutralising an equal portion of labour, with useless 
offices, endowed with unearned income. But so far as it 
thus enhances price abroad, it is a solid enhancement of va- 
lue in favour of the nation which has the understanding to 
avail itself of the circumstance. The enhancement of the 
price of wheat in England, for instance, so long as its bank 



BANKING. 348 

stock maintained its equality with specie, was a real en- 
hancement of the value of labour in the United States, but 
not in England, by reason of the equalising powers of na- 
tive labour ; and the whole effect of our own bank paper, 
was to render some part of this real benefit merely bo- 
minal. 

We now arrive to a conclusion of a formidable aspect. 
If bank currency cannot benefit a nation, through the me- 
dium of domestick commerce; because every species of la- 
bour consumed at home, will equalise its price in relatian 
to a local currency | and if it cannot destroy or even dimin- 
ish mercantile profit upon exported labour ; it follows, that 
it does not reimburse a nation for the tax it collects ; and at 
best only raises prices and excites industry, like taxes and 
useless offices. 

A bank currency may therefore, in its domestick opera* 
tion, both increase price and diminish value. The first by 
neutralising a portion of labour ; the second, by burdening 
the same country with its maintenance, against any reim- 
bursement for which the equalising nature of native prices, 
is an effectual obstacle 

But specie rather excites than neutralises labour, and 
draws little or no tax from a nation. The possessor can 
part with it at a small profit, or even at none, without ruin ? 
because he pays no interest for it ; and it is his interest to 
take any profit in preference to its lying inactive. But the 
borrower of bank paper, cannot part with it, without mak- 
ing a profit equal to its cost. He cannot afford to take a 
profit even of five per centum, as a buyer with his own mo- 
ney may. He must consider himself in the lights of both 
borrower and merchant, and feel a necessity of making pro- 
fit in both characters. The owner of specie considers him- 
self as a merchant only. The first is under a necessit}- of 
uniting in a tacit combination, compounded of bankers and 
borrowers, to depress prices, that one may get interest, and 
the other profit; these ends must be effected, or borrowing 
and lending bank paper would cease ; they are only to be 



effected by a depression of price. And thus a field of com 
petition to the vast amount of six per centum, is shut against 
bank currency, and open to coin ; of course coin will pro- 
duce better prices than bank currency, unexeeptionably ac- 
cording to the criterion of value, and generally according 
to a nominal computation. Whenever it has hoarded or ba^ 
Dished specie, it has gained the exclusive regulation of pri- 
ces, as there does not exist a specie currency able to rival 
corporate currency ; and then it becomes so powerful a re- 
gulator of prices, as to produce most of the effects of an ex- 
clusive privilege. 

After the banishment or incarceration of fifty millions 
of specie* and the substitution of one hundred millions of 
bank currency, the latter would reader ail the commercial 
duties, previously rendered by the former ; but as it could 
not render more than all, so it cannot perform more duty 
than the preceding sum of specie; if it was miraculously 
turned into specie, half of it would fly away into other parts 
of the commercial world, because half could perform the 
whole duty. Still the hundred millions, though half of it is 
useless, cannot afford to give as good prices as the fifty, be- 
cause the hundred millions is burdened with the payment of 
eight on ten millions annually to the bankers and their offi- 
eers, whereas the fifty, like an owner of land in fee, has no 
such rent to pay. Whence it happens that the price and va- 
lue of the products of labour is higher in South America, 
than in England and North America, although the latter 
countries have a greater quantity of circulating currency in 
proportion to population } but then the former has more 
specie currency. 

Bank currency, being in its nature a monopoly, must 
inevitably be governed by the innate law of monopoly. This is 
to enhance its own value, by diminishing value in some other 
quarter. It cannot otherwise subsist. If bank currency gave 
a better price than coin, the coin would be drawn from the 
bank for the purpose of buying cheaper, and the moment 
it performs its promise of outbidding coin, it perishes by de- 
preciating 



BANKING. 545 

So long as it operates as specie, an influx of bank paper 
into this country, produces an efflux of specie, which de- 
parts to raise the real value of foreign labour, whilst the 
remaining local currency, can at most bestow only a nomi- 
nal increase upon domestick. Bank currency, passing as 
specie, is embodied with the general business of commerce, 
and like specie, is governed by the principles of commerce* 
These have declared, that even a redundancy of specie itself, 
cannot be made to render permanent local benefits. If 
bank currency is inextricably interwoven with and influen- 
ced by the principles of commerce, it is simply a redundan- 
cy of specie, under a prohibition against exportation. It 
will enhance the value of the commodities, bought by the 
banking nation of another, periodically, by producing a re- 
dundancy of specie ; and permanently, by a diminution of 
labour. Whilst a country can give high prices in specie? 
for foreign manufactures, on account of a redundancy of 
money caused by bank currency, foreigners will prefer them 
to high-priced commodities. After the specie is gone, the 
price of the same commodities, as to foreigners, will be fix- 
ed by the markets abroad, and not by the paper at home c 

But reasoning upon the question, whether bank curren- 
cy will enhance or depress prices, is superseded by expe- 
rience. The philosophers no longer debated whether a 
monster was in the sun, after they saw the £ly in the teles- 
cope. Through the experience of England, we are pre- 
sented with the disputed fact. England has the most pa- 
per currency of any country of the commercial world, and 
the price of her manufactures is the lowest. 

In contemplating the example of England, we must dis- 
cern compulsion at the beginning, as well as at the end of 
her commerce. Her labour is compelled to sell low to her 
mercantile interest, and foreign nations or her colonies are 
compelled to purchase high of the same interest. Her ma- 
ritime power is the instrument of the latter compulsion, and 
her bank currency of the former. This bank currency can- 
not force up the prices in foreign nations, as her fleet doe? 

45 



346 BANKING.. 

by vexing and crippling competition ; but it can force down 
the prices of labour at home. By taxing labour to maintain 
this fleet, that commerce is enabled to sell high abroad ; 
and by a monopolized currency, regulating the prices of 
domestick labour, she buys low at home. She draws 
wealth and opulence from two sources, knavery and vio- 
lence. To maintain the oppression over foreign nations 
and colonies, she frequently involves herself in war ; to 
maintain the oppression over home labour, she is forced to 
use the penalties, corruptions, and mercenary armies, form- 
ing the code of all despotisms. But she is enriched, because 
labour is her slave* goaded by a paper system, and she makes 
competition shrink by a fleet. 

Lord Sheffield lately observed in debate, that " money 
was the medium of commerce in France, and credit its me- 
dium in England." And he supposed, that hence arose the 
advantage possessed by English commerce over French. It 
is true, that this cause does constitute a portion of that ad 
vantage. Specie, the national currency in France, allows 
labour a competition with commerce, in fixing prices ; but 
paper currency or credit, guided by the spirit of monopoly 
in England, enables commerce to settle the prices of labour. 
Commerce and productive labour are dealers ; with a na- 
tional currency they bargain on equal terms ; with a cor- 
poration currency* governed by commerce, on unequal- 
Hence the price of labour being higher in France than in 
England, France shuts her ports against English manufac- 
tures. Yet English credit or paper, far exceeds French 
coin ; therefore less coin gives better prices, than more 
credit or paper, If France and England should exchange 
situations, the prices of home labour would be raised in 
England by a less amount of national currency ; because 
it would consist of specie, and force commerce to deal with 
labour on equal terms ; and in France, these prices would 
be depressed, by a greater amount of national currency, be- 
cause it would consist of corporation paper, and enable 
monopoly to regulate the prices between labour and com- 
merce, 



BANKING. 3*7 

A circulating medium, measured out to a nation by cor- 
porations, or even by the commercial interest,will certainly 
enrich and strengthen the measuring interest, hut is there a 
single circumstance tending towards publiek happiness or vir- 
tue, in this effect ? The acute bishop Tillotson has said, " If 
the appearance of any thing be good for any thing, the reali- 
ty must be better." The appearance of virtue may he use- 
ful to the guilty i but it is less useful than virtue itself, and 
is frequently a snare to others. The appearance of money 
may be used to tranfer property, like the appearance of vir- 
tue ; and to an interest which monopolizes this appearance, 
it may be, according to Lord Sheffield, more beneficial in a 
pecuniary view, than the reality | but to a nation, the mo- 
ney itself, or a national currency, will, in conformity to 
Tillotson* s maxim, fee better than credit or an appearance of 
money. 

The design and nature of money or currency, con firms 
the superiority of coin to credit. Money is not intended to 
areate wealth, or the objects of commerce : nor is it able to 
do either. Its office is to represent and exchange them, Such 
being the limited power of specie, paper, its shadow, cannot 
do more. Specie can transfer wealth from one country to 
another. If the United States could at pleasure create s\w- 
oie, they might, by a prudent use of such a monopoly, enrich 
themselves considerably at the expense of the world. It is 
not the office of paper currency to transfer wealth from oik 
nation to another, because of its locality; but to transfer 
wealth from man to man, or from a nation to a corporation 
Its design is to enable individuals to imitate nations, in the 
science of overreaching. So long as it represents wealth 
corporations, able to ereate it, can more effe,< nially draw 
wealth from the rest of a ration, by its means, than one ua 
tion could from others, by a power to ereate speeie ; be 
cause it can transfer land from man to man, where* r 
specie can only transfer moveable wealth from nation io 
nation. Paper money or credit, within the sphere of it- 
currency, is more able to transfer property, than specie, 



3&8 BANKING., 

within the sphere of commerce, A chartered power of creat- 
ing it will therefore be used, as would be an exclusive na- 
tional power of creating coin. 

If a paper currency increased the price ef exports, Eng- 
land could not export. This idea is repeated for the sake 
of examining a difficulty which it suggests. Although the 
price of English exportable labour is kept lower than the 
exportable labour of other countries, by the means to which 
the United States have resorted, to raise the price of their 
exportable labour; how happens it that England must 
moreover resort to war and fleets to force her commerce, 
and that she shrunk from a competition with the U. States, 
even when our currency was specie, and the price of our 
labour higher? The fact shews, that a nation, after having 
submitted to the evil and injustice of diminishing the price 
of its own labour, hy a paper currency, was yet unable to 
rival a country without a paper currency, and where the 
price of labour was higher : and therefore that its com- 
merce was in some way injured by the monopoly prescribed 
for its benefit. The solution of this enigma requires a know- 
ledge of English commerce, the want of which confines me to 
surmise. Foreign nations and colonies, would as probably 
take advantage of the low price of labour in England, as her 
capitalist or commercial interest does, if they could enter into 
a. competition with that interest. Tiiis is prevented by a na<- 
ligation act, contrived to secure the benefit of the low price 
of labour, to an order of citizens ; and to exclude foreign 
participation. And the spirit of monopoly, which levelled 
this instrument against home labour, levels it also against 
the world, to enhance the value of exportable commodities, 
after they have passed from the workman to the capitalist 
or merchant. 

But the fact, without any explanation, suffices for our ar- 
gument. It proves, that bank currency will have the effect 
of diminishing the price of exportable labour to the work- 
man, and that it must be raised in favour of the merchant* 
•by the means used in England, namely? war, fleets and nar 
yjgation laws. 



banking. S4S 

It is as a general position true, that the interest of com- 
merce and agriculture are the same ; and we are seduced 
by the truth of this maxim, to neglect an examination of 
our subject ; concluding, from the great opulence evidently 
drawn from corporation currency by commercial individuals, 
that agriculture must be correspondently enriched. The 
real opulence bestowed by banking on one interest or one 
place, we see with the eye of the body ; the supposed opu- 
lence bestowed on the other, we imagine is to be seen by the 
eye of the mind, through the mirror of a general maxim. 

The maxim might be greatly extended. All human in- 
terests are the same. Nothing which is vicious or wrong* 
can be really beneficial to any. The interest of govern- 
ments and nations is the same. Yet tyranny, mischievous 
as it is to both, is common. False and factitious interests, 
are eternally seducing men from true and natural interests ; 
and alliances, intended by nature, are often broken bylaw. 
A monopoly of commerce, or of a branch of commerce, 
would enrich the monopolist, but injure the agriculture or 
manufacture, which supplied the commodity. A monopoly 
of commerce before the revolution, enriched Britain ; the 
merchant of America ; but it was injurious to our agricul- 
ture. To bestow opulence upon an American city by a com- 
mercial or paper monopoly, would be nearly as oppressive 
to agriculture, as to bestow it by the same means on Glas- 
gow. Washington might be enriched by settling there a 
vast stock income, or sinecure offices to an equal amount ; 
but would this enrich the nation ? And if commerce and 
agriculture may commit hostilities against each other, it 
would be still more erroneous to cover a monopoly of na- 
tional currency, by a maxim, which only supposes that com 
merce and agriculture have the same interest, whilst they 
pursue their true interest. 

Agriculture, formed into an aristocracy by the feudal 
system, being guided by a false interest, became infinitely 
less beneficial to commerce, than it would have been, uuin 
iiuenced by the spirit of monopoly $ and commerce, moulded 



&&$ BANKING. 

into a paper aristocracy, will thence also become less be- 
neficial to agriculture, because it will be influenced by the 
aame spirit. That it can breathe its pernicious errours into 
the one, wide as it is spread, is evinced by its capacity to 
corrupt the other, which spreads wider ; unless the mono- 
poly of national currency, is an organ of political respiration, 
less powerful than feudal monopoly. A close affinity is per- 
ceivable between the operations of a feudal and paper aristo- 
cracy ; and if commerce cotdd justly complain of the one, 
agriculture must suffer by the other. Labour needs land to 
produce, and money to transfer agricultural products. A 
monopoly of the necessity, land, or a monopoly of the ne- 
cessity, money, are equivalent modes of extorting from la- 
bour, A vassalage, inflicted by means of the necessity, mo- 
uey is not more voluntary than a vassalage inflicted by means 
of the necessity, land* Borrowing is as unavoidable, a§ 
leasing for rent or services. The collection of the interest 
or dividends by a stock aristocracy, is as certain as the col- 
lection of rents and services by a feudal ; and the superiori- 
ty of one over the other, for effecting the end of every 
aristocracy, rests upon the superiority of the sum collected, 
This estimate is left to tlie reader. 

We will proceed to another. As we all know that a re- 
gular influx of wealth, from a majority to a minority, is 
a regular influx of power, the United States ought to esti- 
mate the quantity of each, they are pouring into a bank- 
ing interest. If no new banks should be created after 1808, 
nor the acquisitions of the old increased, the five millions 
annually collected by the existing banks, at compound inte 
rest, carry from the publick to the corporations, in twenty 
years, above one hundred and eighty-four millions of dol^ 
lars. Here is already a vast current of money and power 
running one way ; will those check it in whose favour the 
current sets ? Are the receivers, as regulators of power and 
wealth, of undoubted confidence ? 

In the same twenty years, the United States lose the use 
of fifty millions of specie, or national currency, expelled or 



BANKING. 3£JH 

locked up as bank 3toek, to create a demand for bank paper. 
At compound interest, (specie being equal in value to bank 
paper) this use is worth above one hundred and ten mil- 
lions, exclusive of the sum exported. Thus, by being de- 
prived of its specie, for which it paid nothing, and supplied 
with paper at the price it costs, the difference to the nations 
in the present state of things, will amount in the next twen- 
ty years, to near three hundred millions of dollars, 

If stock should cease to accumulate, such will be its ope- 
ration; but as history, both here and in England, ascertains 
its fertility in devices for its own increase, our calculation is 
probably too low. Let us however f*x the amount at three 
hundred millions. The reader will recollect, that in treating 
of debt stock, we endeavoured to shew, that its interest was 
equivalent to the rent of land, and that to borrow was 
to sell. In that case, the nation is supposed to receive a 
price for itself or its land ; in this, it pays the rent, inte- 
rest or dividend, but receives no price. And it enhances the 
price of bank stock, for which it receives nothing, by sub- 
jecting itself to pay double the interest paid for debt stock. 

That a banking system does amount in several views to a 
national sale of itself, the history ©fits infancy here, furnish 
es strong apprehensions. Church stock, and feudal stock, 
formed parties, which trafficked in publick rights ; and par- 
ties have grown up with paper stock here. It lias been said 
in the publick prints, that banks have already become in* 
struments for influencing election, and that the Manhattan 
bank could have defeated Mr. Jefferson's, If one bank 
could deprive the publick of any degree of patriotism and ta 
lents, the whole system could expose it to any degree of vice 
and ignorance. Whilst I am writing, prices are offered to le 
gislators for charters. What can be sold for these prices, ex 
cept the people ? What else have legislators to sell ? It is 
admitted, however, that it is as well to sell them, as to bes 
tow them gratuitously. 

In Rhode-Island, bank stock, 1o the amount of four mil 
lions, is said to have been created. She las ue^v seven t* 



552 BANKING, 

thousand people. Allowing her eighteen thousand actual la- 
bourers, and her stock to collect in expenses, perquisites 
and dividends, ten per centum, her labour pays a capitation 
tax of above twenty-two dollars annually to banks. If the 
union contains six millions of people, it can bear, by the 
ratio of Rhode-Island, four hundred and twenty millions of 
bank stock, which would inflict upon the people an annual 
tax of forty-two millions. There is nothing extravagant in 
this calculation ; England has far outstript it in stock ac^ 
cumulation ; Rhode-Island has already realized it. 

If the stock interest in Rhode-Island, draws more nett 
profit from banking, than the Virginia masters do from 
m^hteen thousand Negro slaves, banking approaches in sub- 
stance to a mode of selling freemen. Arthur Young calcu- 
lates the profit of English West-India slaves, at five pounds 
each. The banking mode of converting the labour of one 
to the use of another, is more profitable than this personal 
slavery. 

We cannot omit here to remark a difference between the 
pecuniary interest of wealthy classes. Where monied capi- 
tal or stock constitutes wealth, its interest points to land and 
labour, as the only objects able to satisfy its purpose and 
trade ; but where land and labour constitute it, income and 
accumulation can only be drawn out of itself by the crea- 
tions of industry ; for the utmost oppression of real over 
factitious wealth, is limited to a forbearance of its own 
bounty. This suggests a question of worldly wisdom. It 
is left to the reader to decide which is the dupe. The stock 
interest, in supposing that it enriches itself by banking, at 
the expense of land and labour ; or the land and labour in- 
terest, in supposing that banking will enrich that. One is in- 
evitably mistaken. 

The efficacy of stock, as a mode by which governments . 
sell or give nations to minorities, of which they may consti- 
tute a portion themselves, is capable of arithmetical certain- 
ty. A debt of four hundred and twenty millions sterling: 
covers twelve millions of people at thirty-five pounds ster- 



BANKIKG. 35$ 

hng a head. This is about the average value of all the peo- 
ple in Britain, including every age and sex, considered as 
personal slaves. Britain owes several hundred millions of 
debt stock, beyond this sum, and nearly as much more to 
banks of all descriptions, besides her East-India debt. Ire- 
land has an equivalent debt of her own. This valuation is 
regulated by the value of the West-India slaves j but as the 
people of -Britain supply a double capitation income to stock- 
holders, a better mode is disclosed of making some men pro- 
fitable to others, than the West-Indian. This enormous 
mass of stock for transferring the profit of labour to idle- 
ness, has been compiled with about twenty millions of specie \ 
evincing, that governments can make stock out of stock* 
and that debt stock, like bank stock, is capable of being inde- 
finitely multiplied without money c It has been often said, 
that poor labouring people in Europe, encounter more pen~ 
ury and distress than the Negro slaves in the United States. 
The profit extorted from the Negro slave is moderated by 
the immediate interest of his master in his existence. It 
is moderated by the master's benevolence, and by his res- 
pect for his own reputation. But the slave of stock en- 
joys none of these ameliorations ; and therefore it is not sur- 
prising that he should be more miserable than the personal 
slave. The several descriptions of stock in Britain alrea- 
dy require a far greater profit from the people, than can 
be paid by twelve millions of personal slaves. The pay- 
ing class, is also diminished by the receiving and unproduc- 
tive classes. Excessive labour, poor-houses, penury, pri- 
sons, famine, crimes, must follow. Let not the advocate for 
enslaving freemen by means of stock, venture to compare 
his system with personal slavery. It will be found that indi- 
rect slavery, like indirect taxation, is capable of being car- 
ried to greater excess than direct. 

It is proper to examine arithmetically also, the progress 
of stock in America. Our supposed fifty millions of bank 
itock, being a sum beyond the deposited and existing coin*, 
fixes the capacity of our stock like the English ; to nuilti- 

46 



554 JUNKING, 

ply itself without specie. It circulates* we will suppose,, 
eighty millions of paper, costing the country above six per 
centum ; adding these eighty millions to as much debt stock 
supposed to exist, and the grapples of stock to about thirty- 
two dollars a head, appear already to be thrown over us„ 
Shall we disentangle ourselves from them whilst we have it 
in our power, or defer the effort, until we are irretrievably 
entangled in the intricacies of indirect slavery? A slavery, 
in which the sufferer is ignorant of his tyrant, and the 
tyrant is remorseless, because he is unconscious of his 
crime. 

By bank stock, unless all our reasonings are erroneous, 
and our examples inapplicable, a government may subject a 
nation to the payment of a capitation proiit, to those to whom 
it shall be conveyed by charter, exceeding any proiit extract- 
ed from personal slaves ; and political principles may be 
corrupted. Are there any greater temporal calamities r 
Are there any temporal blessings capable of balancing 
them ? Weigh the terrifiek duumvirate, oppressive taxa- 
tion and a corrupt government, against the benefit proposed 
by banking. All it proposes, its total advantage, lies in the 
simple space of substituting some millions of bank currency, 
for some millions of specie currency. 

We have endeavoured already to prove, that the substi- 
tution is an evil, supposing it to cost the nation neither mo- 
ney nor principles ; if we have failed, it may yet be an evil, 
on account of the loss of money and principles it requires. 
We will add several observations upon these points. 

The freedom of our commerce, and the tendency of mo- 
ney to find a level in the commercial world, furnishes a well 
founded belief, that specie had arrived, or was hastening 
from all parts of the commercial world, to render us all the 
commercial services capable of being rendered by money, 
when banking checked its career. 

The sudden diminution of specie upon this event, is an 
evidence that we had enough for our wants. Had we need- 
ed more currency, specie would have continued in circulation 



with bank currency. But that currency, by producing a 
redundancy of circulating medium, became an ostracism 
against the innocent and patriotick specie. 

It follows that bank paper is an operative agent in the 
adjustment of the level of specie, throughout the commer- 
cial world, though local itself; because the specie it banish- 
es from one country, goes off to another. Hence a country, 
by confining her currency to specie, will receive remittan- 
ces in coin from all others resorting to bank currency 5 by 
resorting to it, the same country sends such remittances to 
other countries in coin also. Banking therefore effects two 
ends completely : it enriches other countries by the expul- 
sion of specie ; and it enriches stockholders by the price 
paid for their paper, to supply the place of the expelled 
specie. Do we incur the first misfortune, for the sake of 
the second ? 

The disappearance of specie, ascertains that its quantity 
sufficed to render every commercial service which curren- 
cy can render, and no amount can render more service than 
a sufficient amount. But though no amount of currency, 
can perform services for a nation, beyond the national de- 
mand for such services, yet an artificial bank currency may 
be thrown into circulation, capable of taxing, but incapable 
of serving a nation. Supposing that fifty millions of specie 
have been taken out of circulation by banking, and that this 
sum sufficed to meet all our demands for a currency, we now 
give five millions annually to get too much of that, of which 
we had enough for nothing; and with which we were re- 
gularly supplied, by the equalising nature of universal cur- 
rency $ just as Virginia, by an utter exclusion of paper, 
would have been supplied with specie. The single quality 
of universal currency, possessed by bank paper, consists of 
a detrimental capacity to expel specie, whilst it is unable to 
go abroad itself, to remove the evils arising from a redun- 
dant currency. Of these qualities, a state of the Union, or 
the whole Union, may avail itself, as a means of turning the 
paper systems of other states, or of the commercial "world.. 



356 BANKING* 

to advantage. Their influence in adjusting the distribution 
of money, would insure to the forbearing country its allot- 
ment in specie, whilst t)\Q inability of paper currency to fly 
abroad, condemns the banking country to the two evils of a 
redundancy of currency, and of receiving its allotment in lo- 
cal paper purchased by an annual tax. 

It would be endless to enumerate all the effects of 
this condemnation ; a few, serving to illustrate the scope 
of our reasoning, and the imbecility of ail attempts to pre- 
vent the natural flux and reflux of specie, cannot be 
omitted. 

There is certainly a measure, beyond which a nation 
cannot be benefitted by money. Its redundancy being an 
evil, the political or commercial body instinctively labours 
to expel it, as the natural body does a disease. But if a na- 
tion entrusts to a college of political doctors, the power of 
dosing it with money, whilst they are enriched in proportion 
to the physick they administer, their fees will be their guide, 
and not the health of the patient. A redundancy of local 
currency, produced by doctors hired to keep it up, can* 
not be disgorged by the efforts of nature struggling for 
health. 

Money (like prices, trades and manufactures) regulates 
itself better than it can be regulated by the doctors, despot- 
ism, monopoly or banking. A regulation of money, is al- 
ways a regulation of prices, and an interposition by law, in 
the economy of individuals. It covers effort and competi- 
tion in every shape, and combines in a mass the several evils 
which would flow from distinct legal prices, for each sepa- 
rate object of human industry. Such an interposition with 
a single article of industry, has invariably terminated in 
mischief ; it is therefore probable, that the power of mea 
auring out currency, placed in corporations, which is an in 
terposition with all prices, and all objects of human indus- 
try, will not produce good. 

A providential scarcity of the metals, devoted to become 
the medium of commerce, prevents the evils of pecuniary 



SANfclSTG, $b*I 

redundancy, and this utility is destroyed by an unlimited 
power of multiplying paper currency. Overflowing mines 
of these precious metals, would destroy their utility as a 
medium of exchange ; and confined to one nation, would di- 
minish rather than increase its happiness. Paper money 
enables avarice to inflict the misery of this redundancy, 
"whilst not even the refuge of forging it into ploughshares is 
left to the nation. Corporations are solicited by the most 
fascinating orator to deluge a nation with a flood of curren- 
cy, no part of which is subject to be drained off by the ebb 
natural to specie. Is that commerce free, the currency of 
whicli is regulated by a corporation ? 

It is because no single government is able to regulate 
universal currency, that it cannot raise the Value of exporta- 
ble by local currency* It is, however, able to diminish the 
profit of this labour, by quartering upon it the dividends of 
this local currency, as we have endeavoured to prove. Sup- 
posing that it may also produce the effect, insisted on for its 
defence, namely, that of enhancing local prices or home 
subsistence ; it then combines the two operations, of dimi- 
nishing the value of exportable labour to the labourer, and 
of enhancing his expenses. 

An effect, extremely similar to this, is produced in 
England by paper currency and excises. The first keeps 
down in a degree the prices of exportable labour or ma- 
nufactures, and the second enhances the expenses of sub 
3istence. A redundancy of bank paper here, which shall 
enhance expenses, operates as excises do in England, except 
that the excise there goes to the government, and here to 
corporations. 

And a consequence of placing the exportable labour of 
that country, under the regimen of a currency regulated by 
a corporation, illustrates both the mischief of such a power* 
and our whole scope of reasoning, by a very striking fact. 
It is by this means deprived of a share in the government* 
The manufacturers are subject to capitalists, and regulat 
ed for their benefit- We have endeavoured to prove, that 



35S Nanking, 

ihe paper system would impoverish the agricultural interest^ 
which produces our exportable labour? worm it out of the 
government, and reduce it to subjection. Let the fate of 
the English manu Picture rs, from a paper regimen, point to 
our agri cultural fat#r under a similar regimen. Let their 
fate also display the justice dispensed by a power to regu- 
late currency- It is the justice invariably dispensed under 
the seduction of avarice. But seduction is unnecessary to 
produce an adherence to one's own interest. A power to 
regulate currency for the agricultural, or mannfactural in- 
terest, and to enrich itself thereby, will rapidly acquire the 
weapon which governs the world. In pursuance of its se* 
parate interest, it has usurped the government in England, 
under the name of the monied interest : reader, which is the 
preferable substitute for our constitutional policy, the Eo> 
perour of France, or the monied interest of England ? 

The po\Ver of substituting a factitious local currency, 
for one naturally universal, is a handle, stronger than that 
of superstition, with which to manage nations. Allegiance 
to the faction, is secured by the fear of losing this artificial 
money. Specie is independent of a faction, and able to be- 
come a patriot. It can attend us in our flight from tyranny, 
and travel over the world, to feed, clothe and arm patriots ; 
but paper chains to the sod, and remains at home to tax for 
party or corporation benefit, and not to cherish liberty. But 
let us leave the goddess to take care of herself, and look a 
little farther after our money. Although we have seen sepa- 
rate interests enslaving nations from the beginning of the 
world, it is still a very difficult thing to make mankind be- 
lieve, that corporations forgathering money, do really take 
that which they were instituted to take. They are now con- 
vinced, that the separate interests of superstition and title, 
had their money in view, under other pretences ; and to save 
it, have expelled them. But they will not believe, that a 
pecuniary order, which avows the design, denied by these 
detected orders, is in earnest. No, this order, unlike others? 
intends to enrich nations, not itself. Let us count thesf 
riches in other modes. 



f BANKING! 6Bit 

Supposing about fifty millions of stock to exist in the 
United States, and that about eighty millions of bank cur- 
rency are circulated, it follows, as before observed, that the 
nation pays at least five millions annually for the bank cur- 
rency, and loses the use of fifty millions specie, worth an- 
nually three millions more. 

These eight millions are annually paid by the nation, to 
gain thirty millions currency, more than it set out with* 
The price paid for this additional currency amounts to about 
twenty-seven per centum per annum. Which is the better 
policy ; to give eight per centum for money, for the purpose 
of attacking France or England ; or twenty-seven, to raise 
up a separate interest to attack our form of government ? 

But if the fifty millions specie performed more useful 
services than the eighty millions bank currency, the compu- 
tation settles in the fact, that we pay a difference of five mil- 
lions annually in favour of an evil. This is an errour still 
more egregious. It is taking up sorrow upon interest. A 
nation which can count, will see that direct pecuniary, or- 
ders operate as their indirect predecessors have done. 

Our calculation goes upon the favorable ground for 
banking, that the stock is in specie, ready to meet the notes, 
or to come forth upon a national emergency ; but if this 
stock was never real, or if the specie is banished by a re- 
dancy of currency, so as gradually to reduce the supposed 
specie stock to paper credit ; the total loss of so much coin v 
and the possible misfortunes which may arise from an ina- 
bility to meet the debts of banking by real money, would 
constitute no inconsiderable items of additional evil bought 
by the nation. 

The evils bought with debt stock, have been often com- 
pared to those obtained by banking. Compare also the 
riches they bestow on a nation. One docs not expel specie, 
the other does. One collects fi\Q or six per centum interest, 
the other ten or twelve per centum charges and dividends. 
Ah ! but these dividends costs nobody a fai thing, Well .' 
let us call the interest of national debt a dividend, and the 
debt U no more. 



860 BAN-RING. 

Their political and physical similitude, breaks in upon 
us at every step, abstractedly or experimentally considered. 
Funded stock, when proposed for national consideration, 
was announced as a blessing ; thi9 blessing was said to be 
comprised in its increase of capital and industry. The same 
mantle, stript by publick sagacity, from funaed stock, has 
been with wonderful ingenuity, thrown over bank stock. 
That also is gravely announced by its inventors as a publick 
blessing ; and why ? It will increase capital and industry. 
The United States detected the shallow artifice under which 
the designs of funded stock were hidden, because it Avas 
moreover defended by pretexts, said to be necessities ; they 
cannot see the same artifice spread over the designs of bank 
stock, because it has no auxiliary ; or because we some- 
times search in vain for that which lies directly before our 
eyes. 

This common and solitary refuge of our twin namesakes, 
is simply that of all orders enriched by law and oppression. 
ik It is their opulence," say they, " which gives employment 
to labour and excites industry." Thus have all such or- 
ders concealed the wealth they extract, and the poverty they 
inflict. As a justification of banking also, this old mode of 
concealment requires attention. 

Does banking increase capital ? It does, if real capital is 
increased, by increasing paper currency ; but if paper cur- 
rency can at most be considered as capital, when balanced 
by property and labour, an additional quantity can no more 
increase capital, than blowing up poor mutton can increase 
meat. A redundancy of specie would not forma stationary 
capital. As birds of passage travel in search of food? 
specie travels in search of the real capital it represents ; and 
if the food or employment is insufficient for either concourse, 
the overplus flies away. If specie could create capital, it 
would find stationary employment every where. From these 
facts we infer, that money is not capital, but the representa- 
tive of capital ; and that it is inverting the true and genuine 
relation between capital and money, to suppose that money 



BANKING. &6i 

produces national capital, instead of national capital produc- 
ing money. The value of labour is real capital. If 
a nation had an hundred millions of money, but did not la- 
bour, it would presently be without capital ; but if its la- 
bour was worth five millions annually, though it had no mo- 
ney, it would have an hundred millions of capital, which 
would soon attract money. The introduction of bank pa- 
per is uniformly the epoch from which the diminution of 
specie is dated. If specie therefore is capital, bank paper 
diminishes capital, if not, neither can its representative be 
capital. It is by real capital, that specie is equalised among 
commercial nations. As a representative, it is subordinate 
and responsible to its principal. Bank paper cannot pos- 
sess an intrinsick value, if the value of specie is representa» 
tive ; therefore it cannot increase capital ; and a surplus* 
beyond a necessary currency, far from falling within any 
idea of the term capital? can Gnly exist by feeding on capU 
tal, the principal of currency. If bank paper was new eapi* 
tal, so far from expelling the representative of the old, it 
would require more representation* and attract specie, Oi* 
if, like specie, it was the responsible representative of capi- 
tal or property, it would be subordinate to its principal. On 
the contrary, it is made bylaw, an irresponsible representa- 
tive of capital or property \ and a currency converted from 
the servant into the master of property? necessarily becomes 
a tyrant, to secure its power. 

The advocates of banking admit this doctrine, by con- 
tending that it is beneficial to a nation to expel specie by 
paper ; as it causes an exchange of the representative of ca- 
pital, for the thing itself. If the capital, thus gotten from 
foreign nations, by the expelled specie, would produce a 
permanent profit, superior to the annual cost of the sub- 
stituted paper, this would be true; but the difficulty of dis- 
covering any such profit, and the visibility of the cost, are 
strong evidences that it is false. This stratagem for en- 
riching a nation can be practised but once, whereas the 
^ost of bank paper substituted for expelled specie is an 

4? 



*6$ BANKING, 

mially repeated. Besides, a redundancy of ipecie for ex- 
portation, produced by the creation of bank paper for home 
use, diminishes the value of that specie; and this deprecia- 
tion both causes its flight, and constitutes an actual loss to 
the stock jobbing nation. Again. If an increase of currency, 
was an increase of capital and industry, the stratagem of 
sending abroad the specie or universal currency by the 
stockjobbing nation, defeats the end proposed ; both by 
the amount of the money exported, and also by increasing 
the ca utal and stimulating the industry of rival nations, to 
whom the specie is exported. 

When we see gold and silver fly away from a country, 
because it is unable to create capital, and because capital can 
only retain a competent representation in currency; an 
opinion, that bank currency will create it, undoubtedly eon- 
tains more of credulity, than one, that any other metal can 
create gold. It affords matter for another alchymist* The 
drama might again exhibit cunning preying upon the ava- 
rice it pretends to feed. But a stage would be too small 
to contain the two orders of character ; that of Epicure, 
Mammon, Ananias and Tribulation on one hand, and of 
Subtle and Tare on the other. 

Bank paper, not being capital, or able to create capital, 
it is to Ik* further examined, whether it encourages and 
creates labour and industry, as it also pretends. If it did, 
the new created industry, would retain the specie it expels. 
This inquiry lies in a comparison, between a legal institu- 
tion for acquiring wealth to an enormous extent, without ta- 
lents or industry ; and leaving its acquisition to the regula- 
tion of talents and industry. Wealth in both cases is suppos- 
ed to be the spur to exertion. By a laborious cultivation of 
my talents and persevering industry, I acquire a moderate 
degree of wealth ; by banking I acquire infinitely more, with- 
out labour or talents. Why should I subject myself to the 
fatigue of becoming learned and useful, to become the scoff 
of a rieh, idle and voluptuous order? Their abundance, to 
which I must contribute, will diminish my competence, in 



B.IK KING'* 5W 

the eye of comparison, almost to nothing; and of course in 
my own eyes. No, I will go into the lottery where there 
are no blanks; where every ticket draws annual prizes; 
and where, as a stockjobber, I may be as rich, as idle, as 
ignorant, and as useless, as a bishop, nobleman or king. 
What will the world say of our experiment to establish a 
free government, if an epithet, universally considered as 
far more humiliating than those of bishop, nobleman or 
king, should become the title of a separate order or into- 
rest in the United States ? 

This mode of encouraging industry, by creating rich and 
idle orders to give it employment, has been practised in va- 
rious forms, but all contain the same principle* Heredita- 
ry and hierarchical orders, encourage industry in the same 
way as stock orders do ; by taxing it to maintain themselves 
in idleness and affluence. The lash is applied to slaves, and 
taxation to freemen, to encourage industry. Masters and or- 
ders praise the effect of both causes, to gain wealth and lei- 
sure for themselves. If one evil lias been imposed by a fo- 
reign nation on this country, should it therefore impose the 
other on itself? 

When debt stock boasts that it is an encourager of industry, 
it refers to the stimulus of taxation ; yet it attempts by every 
artifice, to conceal from the people the cause of this vaunt- 
ed effect. Bank stock also boasts of the same merit, but it 
pretends that an abundance of money, and not the goad of 
taxation, is its cause. The first, by hiding the cause of the 
effect it claims, confesses its treachery not more conspi- 
cuously than the second, by pretending that it encourages 
industry by a superfluity of money. Are extortion and do- 
nation, a robber and a prodigal, equally eneouragers of in- 
dustry? I, says debt stock, encourage industry, by taking 
away your money; and I, says bank stock, by pouring mo- 
ney into your pockets. When, by theory or experience, has 
it ever been said, that either the redundancy of money, or 
the loss of earnings, was an encouragement to industry ? 
If the calculation of a false opinion, that industry enjoys her 



$&& BANKING,, 

<t>wn earnings? is the best mode to which all orders, titled or 
stock, can resort for her encouragement, it is e\ident that 
the mode would be improved, by making the opinion true* 
Fulfilment would be a stronger excitement to industry, than 
disappointed hope. 

The true sanction of private property, consists in its ef- 
fect to stimulate men to industry, and the improvement of 
the understanding ; from the consideration that they will 
enjoy whatever their knowledge and industry may gain. Ex- 
actly the reverse of this sanction, and this effect, is the doc- 
trine, that knowledge or industry will be excited and in- 
creased, by transferring a portion of their gains from them- 
selves, to orders, hereditary, titled, hierarchical or stock. 
Although all such orders profess themselves to be encou- 
ragers of knowledge and industry, and friends to private 
properly, it is hence evident, that they either deceive them- 
selves, or attempt to deceive others,, 

An idea, heretofore suggested, seems of sufficient im- 
portance to be again brought to mind, for the sake of argu- 
ments, which have since occurred. It is that which sup- 
poses the credit of nations to he property, of a species, as 
far beyond the power of a government to give away to cor- 
porations, as any other species* 

Currency and credit are social rights, in a state of ap- 
propriation, and not a species of wild game, to be seized and 
bestowed by governments, any more than other social rights. 
To save, not to sell or give away such rights, constitutes the 
utmost power of free governments. To hestow on corpora- 
tions, by charters, an exclusive right Of uttering currency, is 
more exceptionable, than to give or sell to them an exclusive 
right of uttering new patents for land, because every indivi- 
dual owns a share of the national credit, which is not the 
case as to land. Or considering the nation's land, in a ter- 
ritorial view, as equivalent to the nation's credit, the dis- 
memberment of one, would be a question equivalent to th*> 
•lismemberment of the other* 



BANKING* 365 

The term (S national," applied to currency and credit, 
furnishes an argument in favour of their positions. The 
use of a term descriptive of appropriation, proves that cur- 
rency and credit arc appropriated. All property is under 
the sanction of a twofold species of appropriation in so- 
ciety. It is appropriated to the use of the nation, for pub- 
lick defence, and the administration of the government 
After this object is satisfied, it is appropriated to the use 
of the individuals composing the nation. But there is not in 
free countries any appropriation, to the use of a government, 
called party or administration territory, commerce or cre- 
dit, to be chartered by it to individuals or factions* On the 
contrary, this third kind of appropriation, constitutes a vio- 
lation of puhlick and private property, and the difference be- 
tween free and despotick governments. 

The right and property of national credit, territory and 
commerce, are of the same nature ; and it equally violates a 
policy? founded in the principles of liberty, for a govern- 
ment to charter away portions of one, as portions of ano- 
ther. Those minor appropriations of credit* land or com- 
merce, produced by the talents, labour and industry of indi- 
viduals, or by the municipal law which embraces every mem- 
ber of a society, are of the second species of appropriation? 
and distinct from the third* 

The principles of political morality admit only of the ap- 
propriation of property, in the two first modes, and reject 
the third, as unnecessary for a government, inconsistent with 
the ends of its institution, and the ground work of civilized 
tyranny. 

A transfer of private or publick property, or both, from 
individuals or nations, to orders, corporations or to other in- 
dividuals, is the evil moral principle, in which all heredi- 
tary and hierarchical orders have been founded, and of 
course, in plain hostility with any principles, capable of be- 
ing assigned as the ground work of the government of the 
United States. 



£60 BANKING. 

That government could not by its laws or its power, en 
rich corporations at the publiek expense, nor touch proper- 
ty, except for publiek use, was so well understood as a prin- 
ciple, essential to liberty, as to have been unequivocally ex- 
pressed in most of our constitutions, by inhibitions of " exclu- 
sive emoluments," except for such publiek services as were 
not transmissible. Our governments are not allowed to in- 
vade that appropriation of property called private, by bes- 
towing emoluments which some portion of it must pay, up- 
on any occasion, except such as is covered by that appro- 
priation called publiek. They are therefore prohibited by 
the written rule, as well as by the moral principle, essential 
to free forms of government, from invading or transferring 
property for private or corporation emolument. And lest 
a government might call a violation of private property, a 
publiek benefit, as it has uniformly done in every species of 
monopoly, the constitutions quoted have provided against 
this evasion, by limiting a power in tlie governments to bes- 
tow emoluments, for the compensation of personal and Un- 
alienable publiek services. 

That credit and currency are, in society, property, both 
publiek and private, is demonstrable from other eonsidera- 
tions. Talents and industry will divide and distribute ere 
dit and currency, as they do land. A species of wealth 
which talents and industry can distribute, is property. 
What is the distinction, allowing our governments to take 
away the whole, or any portion of this species of pro- 
perty, and to give it to corporations, which must not ad- 
mit a power of chartering away the lands of individuals, 
and the national territory ? If both land and credit, or 
currency are distributable by talents and industry, then, 
to distribute either by law, is fraudulent and oppressive. 

If it be said, that credit and currency cannot be consi- 
dered as property, publiek or private, because they cannot 
be divided by metes and bounds, like land ; it is answered, 
that an incapacity for a similar division is common to sun- 
dry social rights, such as the freedom of religion and of the 



pres9 ; and that the sanction of the right, not the marks of 
the division, being the basis of property, this sanction must 
be equally strong in relation to land and credit or currency, if 
it can reach both, aud must be equally violated by distribute 
ing either by law. 

Commerce is called national, like credit and currency. It 
is less capable of a division among the people than credit, 
or currency. Is it not a species of property, both publick 
and private ? As publick, it is an object of taxation. As 
private and publick, our government cannot charter it en- 
tirely or in portions to corporations, because in our society, 
there exists only two appropriations of property, publick 
and private | the first as payment for publick services, to be 
made by law : the second, the acquisition of private people, 
which no law can transfer to other private people. 

There is no distinguishing between commerce, credit 
and currency, as objects of social property. This indelible 
similarity admits only of two inferences ; either that our 
constitutions have surrendered both to be appropriated to in- 
dividuals or corporations, by the charters of our govern- 
ments, or that they have surrendered neither. 

Knowledge, at first view, seems to possess less of the 
nature of property, than lands, commerce, credit or curren- 
cy ; yet a legal monopoly of knowledge, is inconsistent with 
our principles. The compulsion to buy corporation curren- 
cy, produced by banishing national currency, greatly resem- 
bles the compulsion to buy hereditary knowledge, by banish- 
ing national knowledge. To buy corporation currency to 
carry on trade, seems as absurd as to buy hereditary know- 
ledge to carry on government. The Chinese monopoly of 
knowledge, is an illustration still stronger than the heredir 
tary, An order, by prohibiting the use of an alphabet (the 
coin of knowledge) produces national ignorance, and thence 
-draws with its exclusive knowledge, exclusive wealth and 
power. By the banishment of speeie (the coin of fair and 
free commerce) and the substitution of hieroglyphieks con- 
fined to a species of mandarin, tfre privileged .individuals* 



668 BANKING. 

••• 

will also, like mandarins, draw exclusive wealth and power* 
If this Chinese monopoly of knowledge, sensibly affects pri- 
vate property, is it inconceivable that a monopoly of credit 
or currency will also sensibly affect it? 

Credit or currency, is unquestionably of the nature of 
private property, so far as it is able to transfer it. If a go- 
verninent should allege against a charge of having invaded 
private property, that it only furnished the instrument for 
taking it away, the charge would be acknowledged. There 
can be no honest difference between transferring property 
from private people, to a corporation, directly or indirectly. 
The moral and constitutional principles, which condemn the 
one, condemn the other. Not the process, but the injury, 
constitutes the violation of these principles. Will it be said, 
ihat although our governments cannot directly take away 
puhiick or private property, and give it to corporations, that 
they may give them the power of expelling specie, and of 
transferring property indirectly by corporation currency? 
Any portion of bank paper, thrown into^circulation, repre- 
sents and transfers some portion of private property from 
individuals to corporations or to other individuals. If it be- 
comes the only currency, its effect in this operation is con- 
stant and great. And the limitation of this transfer, de 
pends on the will of the corporation. Although we have 
avoided the details of banking as much as possible, it cannot 
be overlooked, that the liability of the stock only, the unli 
mited power to issue notes, and the capacity of those notes 
to transfer property, constitute temptations, which human 
nature has never been a match for. The nation possessed 
a national currency \ after the complete introduction of a 
corporation currency, it no longer possesses this species of 
property. If the national territory was as effectually thrown 
into the form of a feudal monopoly, as its currency is thrown 
into that of a banking monopoly, the national territory 
would be covered by the term 6i seigniory," as the national 
currency is now covered by the terms " bank notes," and 
the suppression of the term " national/' in both cases, is an 



BANKING. S69 

equal evidence that an order had obtained, what was previ- 
ously the publick property. 

Let us suppose that a legislature had in the public^ 
treasury half a million of dollars. Could it make a bank 
by charter, and give it this money ? Why not ? The money 
belongs to the nation ; and it would be a transfer from the 
nation to a corporation, of so much publick property, for no 
publick object. 

If national currency is suppressed, and corporation cur- 
rency interpolated, it will have the effect of transferring 
from the nation to the corporation, a much larger portion 
of private property, than this unjust and unconstitutional 
donation of half a million of the publick money. Is $ 
small transfer of publick and private property to a corpo- 
ration, contrary to our policy, but a great one consistent 
with it? 

This argument cannot be eluded by the fact, that bank 
corporations supply their own stock or capital. It is not 
the property covered by that capital, supposing it to be spe- 
cie, which is transferred by governments from nations to 
banks. That capital covers as much of the property of 
other people, without the help of law, as it ought to co- 
ver ; and can only transfer the amount it represents. To 
thi3 amount, and to no more of the property of others, are 
the holders of this specie capital, justly or constitutionally 
entitled. 

But the law steps in, unites these holders into a bank, 
and empowers this bank to issue twice as much currency as 
its capital, actually retained to meet its notes. T hus the ef- 
fect of transferring property from the people at large to the 
bank must inevitably follow, by deranging so egregiously 
the fair and equitable value or level of national currency* 
as to make a portion of it in the hands of corporations, of 
double value to that which remains in the hands of the na- 
tion. And this enormous and exclusive appreciation of 
the value of specie or national currency, is gained by 
:he privileged sect ; whilst the money held by all not of 

48 



the corporation, is in fact depreciated by the fraudulent de- 
lation. 

Let us throw this argument into figures, as the only 
mode of making it perfectly plain. Half a million, in a fair 
and just state of the partnership, called society, represents 
and entitles the holders to only half a million's worth of pro- 
perty; and those who hold the property of this partner- 
ship, owe to its holders, and must relinquish so much of 
their property as the currency represents, and no more. But 
a few individuals of this partnership or society, have pre 
tailed unon the government to grant them an exclusive char- 
ter, to issue a whole million of currency, upon the credit or 
opinion that they possess half a one. Is it not evident, that 
these members of the society have gained an advantage over 
those not sharing in the privilege ; and that so much of the 
property of the rest of society, as the whole million of bank 
currency will cover, beyond the half million of specie, id 
thereby inevitably taken from the partnership called na- 
tional or social, and transferred to the minor partnership, 
called corporate or banking ? If so, the principle of an equa- 
lity of rights is violated, by making the money of a few 
uscii, more valuable than the money of the people at large ; 
and by the indirect, but certain mode thence arising, of 
transferring the property of those who have the least valu- 
able money, to those possessing the most valuable. Nor can 
a species of exclusive privilege be conceived, capable of 
producing greater pecuniary loss and gain. Accordingly f 
banking, in gathering wealth, travels with a rapidity unat~ 
tempted by the most able hierarchical collector. 

We have supposed, merely to simplify the argument, 
that specie stock emits double its amount in bank currency.. 
This is precarious and fluctuating ; and therefore the rea- 
der ia reminded, that although a precise sum U mentioned 
for the sake of perspicuity, yet that the argument applies to 
the surplus or wank currency issued, whatever it be, beyond 
the actual specie deposited in the bank. The portion of 
feoeiety privileged to iasue two, three or four dollars for enf, 



becomes one order, and the unprivileged, another. The dol- 
lar which can multiply itself, is more puissant, than the 
doiiar which cannot. One is a patrician, the other a plebeian, 
These dollars will represent their owners, or the owners 
their dollars. 

But to prevent any mistake, it is necessary more paf*$* 
cularly to explain the mode or process, by which the en- 
hancement of the value of an incorporated dollar, beyond 
an unincorporated one, is effected. It consists chiefly of 
two items. First, the surplus of notes circulated, beyond 
the amount of the stock or capital, produces a surplus of in- 
terest. beyond what the stock or capital could produce j the 
whole of which is an addition to the value of incorporated, 
beyond that of unincorporated specie ; and will transfer a 
correspondent surplus of property. For instance, if a capi^ 
tk\ of half a million stock, can circulate two millions of pa- 
per at six per centum only, one^fotirtli of the paper produ~ 
ces the whole interest which unincorporated specie can pro- 
duce ? therefore the other three-fourths are additional va* 
lue given to the incorporated specie by an exclusive privi^ 
lege, destroying an equality of rights in the national peeu* 
niary partnership, and transferring unjustly all the proper- 
ty covered by stfeh additional value. The second important 
Hem of this process of appreciation, consists of the artifice 
of taking out a portion of the stock or capital, and acquir- 
ing with it the whole property it represents, and ought in 
justice to transfer ; and of circulating paper currency, upon 
the credit of an opinion, that the stock thus used remain? 
deposited* It is obvious, that the interest of Hig whole of 
the paper, circulated upon the basis of ideal stock, is an 
addition to the value of the specie, which has in person trans 
ferred all the property it ought to transfer $ and that this 
unjust enhancement arises from the exclusive privilege. If 
k is recollected that there are about fifty millions of bank 
stock in the United States, and that even a moiety of it could 
not possibly have been deposited in specie, the great, effect 
of artificial stock* in transferring property will at a glanet 
b& cousniouous- 



87g BANKING. 

The example of a commercial partnership, consisting of 
one thousand persons, supplying different quotas of stock* 
trill still illustrate the argument. We will suppose that 
the stock of the wealthiest individual of the partnership, 
amounted to one thousand dollars, and of the poorest, to one $ 
and that the intermediate space, was occupied by a great va- 
riety of sums, constituting the stock of the other partners* 
The profits are the property of the partnership, and ought 
to be proportioned according to the stock of each individual. 
The partner entitled to one thousand dollars, ought to have 
one thousand times more than the partner entitled to one 
dollar of the stock. But if you give him two, three or four 
thousand times more, than you give to the partner having 
one dollar stock, you rob this poor partner, and all the in- 
termediate partners, of a portion of their property, and give 
it to the rich partner* By suffering the rich partner to 
take his thousand dollars out of the partnership, and leave 
only his credit behind, he acquires its value in property, be- 
sides retaining the double interest to acquire more proper- 
ty. Society is this partnership ; bankers, the partners wh» 
draw more property than their money or that of other's re- 
presents ; cunning and rich bankers, those who take away 
their stocky or a portion of it, and continue to draw this 
overplus of property ; and the poor partner represents 
those, not bankers, and limited to draw property in strict 
proportion to the value of their money. 

National currency is the stock representing national pro* 
perty, as mercantile capital represents partnership profit 
This stock is unequally divided, but it is entitled to a pro- 
portional value in property, as mercantile capital is in pro- 
fit. Banking enables about one in a thousand of a nation 
to draw out of the national stock of property, considera- 
bly more than his share of national currency entitled him 
to, which unjust overplus is a deduction from the property 
of the other members of the society: just as any mode, di- 
rect or indirect, by which one partner could get more than 
his proportional share of mercantile profit, transfers to him 



the property of others. And as the acquisitions of banking, 
from the nature of the institution, must settle in the hand! 
of the wealthy class, it is of course a mode of adding to the 
wealth of that class, by taking from all others ; similar to 
the enrichment of the rich mercantile partner, and analo- 
gous in its effects to every exclusive order, which has here- 
tofore deluded and enslaved nations. 

The injustice of appreciating partially and exclusively 
the money of a minor order, or of any portion of society, is 
yet farther illustrated, by recollecting, that appreciation is 
necessarily attended by its correlative, depreciation 5 and 
that the effects of the one in moral geometry, are an exact 
mensuration of the effects of the other. Value is relative* 
If the money or property of one portion of the society, is 
raade by law to be worthless, the money or property of those 
Bot thii3 oppressed, will consequently be worth more ; if the 
law adds partially to the value of the money or property of 
some, it eorrespendently diminishes their value as to otherSr 
Tiie funding system illustrates both positions. First, by 
funding without providing for the interest, the certificates 
were depreciated, and other money or property appreciated, 
because two shillings of it would buy twenty shillings of the 
certificate. Secondly, by providing for the payment of the 
interest after the depreciated property, had been purchased 
by the appreciated property, an appreciation of certificates 
took place, which lessened the value of all property subject- 
ed to make the appreciation good, even of those who had 
suffered the depreciation. This appreciation of certificates 
tenfold beyond their current value, is the literal case of ap- 
preciating specie by banking beyond its current value ; ex- 
cept that the appreciation of specie does net visibly appear 
to be so exorbitant. Although, if banks have resorted to 
paper to make up capital, as is unquestionable, the diffe- 
rence between the legal appreciation of monopolized certifi- 
cates, and of bank stock, in point of exorbitancy, will be in- 
considerable. Whatever it is, the moral injustice of mak- 
ing a currency, worth only twenty shillings in the pound, of 



£74 BANKING, 

the value of eighty or forty shillings, in favour of a few cor*- 
porations, is founded in the same principles of monopoly, 
partiality and violation of property, in which the deprecia* 
iiori and appreciation of the certificates was founded ; ex- 
cept that for this, no pretext or nominal reason existed. It 
is a plain continuation of that system. The depreciation of 
certificates, enabled a few to get them at one-tenth of their 
nominal amount. Their appreciation invested the holders- 
with an enormous pecuniary advantage. Banking appre- 
ciates mo»7ey incomputably, especially where bank paper 
bas made bank stock. It is the second great movement of 
nn enormous and crushing monopoly. 

To display and compare with our policy ami constitu- 
tions, the abuses which have successively destroyed liberty 
and happiness, it was necessary to prove the distinction ber 
tween these abuses and our political principles, and their ir 
reconcileable enmity to each other. This part of the es- 
say, is devoted to the consideration of a system of partiality 
and monopoly, introduced by law, because we conceive it to 
be as inimical to our policy and constitutions, and more 
dangerous than Mr. Adams's system of orders ; or than the 
aristocracies of nobility or hierarchy. 

Aristocracy is forever adapting itself to the temper of 
the times. In those of ignorance and superstition* it pre- 
tended to be the sanctified herald of the gods. In warlike 
times, it glittered in armour, and boasted its prowess. And 
now* it dazzles avarice with such riches as we see in 
dreams, whilst it is building up for itself a tower with cent 
per cent, from whence it can scale and conquer our consti- 
tutions. 

Against that portion of the system of paper and patror* 
age, called funding or anticipation, none of the American 
constitutions have provided a cheek. If borrowing and 
funding can enslave nations, our governments possess a des- 
potiek power, without any control, that of election excepted, 
It ought therefore, if it can be effected, to be placed in a 
state of division, between the general and state governments* 



BANKING. &7£ 

<o prevent either from destroying the other by this instru- 
ment ; or to be subjected to some other cheek. Armies 
will enslave their country, after they have bled for it ; there- 
fore they must be checked by an armed nation ; funding 
systems bleed their country, and unless they are more 
patriotiek than armies, they seem to be an object of equal 
danger. 

The army mode of enslaving the nation, is not left to 
the exclusive control of election. Military men are exclud- 
ed from legislatures, and whilst the general government 
may raise an army, the states may arm? officer and disci- 
pline the militia. 

If banking is inconsistent with the positive rules of our 
constitutions, or adverse to their general principles, the 
laws upon the subject are void. But supposing it only trans- 
fers property unfairly, and to be as dangerous to liberty as 
funding, it cannot plead national necessity as a subterfuge 
against annihilation ; and what friend to free government 
would hesitate to annihilate the power of borrowing, if 
there was a certainty that the national defence would never 
render it necessary? But it can plead charters ; the Lord 
deliver us from charters I Admit that the banking system 
ought not to have existed, yet these sanctions for evil say 
that it shall continue to exist. 

A history of charters would afford vast amusement and 
instruction to nations | it would terminate in ascertaining, 
that orders have practised as insidiously behind these, as be- 
hind altars. Such as are improvidently granted by nations, 
or corruptly by governments? are said, like the oracles, to 
be sacred % but those obtained by nations or individuals 
from orders? are disregarded or destroyed, as interest or 
ambition dictates. English municipal law, applies to the 
charters to be revoked in favour of orders, the term obrep- 
iitious, implying, that they were obtained by surprise, or by 
% concealment of their effects ; in whieh cases they are to- 
ne vacated. But it has no term or process, recognising & 
*%l;t in nations to pastime improvident grants, or to annul, 



376 ^ANSLIFQ. 

those made by the government, contrary to national rights 
or publick good* Admitting, however, that the people of 
our Union have no right to save their liberties against an 
host of charters, unless a precedent to justify it can be 
found (a doctrine as correct, as that they have no right 
to tlie Union or their policy, because they are unjustified 
hy precedent) this English law furnishes such a prece- 
dent. 

Orders in England constitute the sovereignty ; the peo- 
p!e, in the United States. The sovereignty of orders annuls 
charters for sundry causes | the sovereignty of the people 
may therefore, even according to precedent, annul them for 
the same causes. No cause could be more complete ly 
within the reason and scope of the English doctrine, than 
one, which would tend to the destruction of the sovereign- 
ty of orders in that country ; whatever tends to the des- 
truction of the sovereignty of the people here, is equal- 
ly within its scope and meaning. And the right of the so- 
vereignty here to annul obreptitious charters, is stronger 
than it is in England, because there the charter may be the 
act of the sovereignty itself ; here it can only be the act of 
the agents of the sovereignty, responsible, of limited powers* 
and having no power directly or indirectly to change the na- 
ture of the government by obreptitious charters. 

Bank charters, in a vast variety of views, fall within 
this English law doctrine, unless the reasonings of this es- 
say are incorrect. Who, for instance, was aware that this 
was a mode of indirect taxation ? And who believed, that at 
this moment the United States were paying five millions 
worth of their property, annually, to a small portion of their 
people, for a fictitious currency ? 

These law charters, however sanctioned by legal forms, 
are never genuine national law. National will, in free go- 
vernments, is the only genuine sanction of law. The will 
of the legislature, is the instrument for proclaiming this 
sanction. If a legislature should pass a law charter, for ad- 
vancing the exclusive interest of the legislative body, or of 



BANKING. 07? 

iome other combination of men, at the expense of the na- 
tional interest, both mora! and pecuniary, it obviously 
makes a false proclamation, and the question is, whether 
the genuine sanction of law, or this false proclamation, 
ought to be most sacred. Without leaving our subject to 
consider the device of consecrating these spurious laws, be- 
yond the genuine, and even beyond constitutional law itself, 
it falls within it to consider the character of a separate or 
exclusive interest, which invariably dictates them. 

It is happily hit off unintentionally by Mr. Addison in his 
third Spectator, where he personifies publick credit, by a 
virgin, enthroned on gold in the hall of the bank of Eng- 
land ; surrounded by funding laws ; delighted with contem- 
plating them ; timorous ; a valetudinarian ; suddenly with- 
ering; suddenly reviving ; converting whatever she touch- 
ed into gold, which would as suddenly vanish or become 
tallies, if she was affrighted ; fainting and dying at the 
sight of a commonwealth ; and revived by monarchy. 

By mistaking the exclusive interest called funding, for 
publick credit, Mr. Addison has described the character of 
paper stock. Gold, and not virtue, is the terrestrial deity 
of this allegorical being, so improperly represented as a vir- 
gin. She admits promiscusus and loathsome embraces to 
acquire it. Wealth rises as if by magiek around her, as 
around fraud and theft. It disappears upon the least rust- 
ling of danger ,* as a robber hides his booty. She is timo- 
rous from conscious guilt. She is a sickly moral being, be- 
cause she is formed of bad moral principles. She faints and 
dies under a commonwealth, because she cannot live within 
the pale of common interest, and can only subsist on its 
destruction ; and she is revived by monarchy, a congenial 
being, which aids this fearful, sickly, fainting, reviving, ma- 
gical and wicked being, by surrounding her with consecrat- 
ed law charters. 

Contrast genuine and honest publick credit, with this 
thievish spectre, and assign the privilege of consecrating 

4.9 



S7S BANKIXGf* 

law, to general or exclusive interest, as the result shall in- 
dicate which of the two is the « urest legislator. 

Genuine publick credit is enthroned, not upon gold ga- 
thered by law into a bank, hut jipon property distributed 
by industry. It is greatest, where national debt is least. It 
flows from national wealth and prosperity, not from the 
wealth of corporations enriched by exclusive privileges^ It 
creates gold by industry, not by magick ; and saves it by 
valour, not by hiding ; it is a healthy moral being, because 
it is formed of good moral principles ; and bold, because it 
is honest. It flourishes under a commonwealth, and dies 
under a monarchy. Hostile principles cannot live in union 
and friendship. National credit and corporation credit 
must consort each with its like. They are respectively kill- 
ed and revived by monarchy and a commonwealth, because 
a government founded on the principle of minority accords 
with one, and that founded on the principle of majority, with 
the other. Corporation credit, artificially created by law 
and orders, unite and cohere, from an identity of origin and 
nature. National credit, arising from fair industry and na- 
tional wealth, can only unite with a free and equal govern- 
ment. 

All partial interests, capable of procuring or sustaining a 
law, belong to the family of this virgin described by Mr. Ad- 
dison. Of the two sisters of this family which have appear- 
ed in the United States, funding and banking, one only is 
now heaping up gold by magick, and figuring in legislatures. 
She is adored as a beauty, and the other execrated as a hag ; 
although the family likeness is so strong, that they pass for 
twins. As the fate of the general interest, depends upon 
this amour between the government and the twin sister of 
Mr, Addison's virgin, the consequences of endowing her 
with the privilege of passing consecrated laws or law char- 
ters, as her English sister has been endowed, are-referred to 
the reader's consideration. Liberty was nearly smothered 
in the embraces between our government and Mr. Addison^s 

. i ? thf amour going ©n with her sister will hardh 



"Vhe it. But let us return from the political features of the 
subject, to calculation. The annual exports of the products 
of the United States, have been supposed to amount to about 
forty millions of dollars, and the bank capital to about fif- 
ty ; and we have endeavoured to prove, that the. five millions 
paid annually for bank paper, cannot be reimbursed by any 
additional price bestowed by it on our exports. This 
glimpse of the manner in which banking, in its infancy, en- 
riches agriculture and manufactures ; in its maturity, be- 
comes a clear light. By the return of 1803 to the British 
parliament, the official value of British maaufacfuies or ex- 
ports, was less than twenty-lour millions sterling, but their 
real value was estimated by the minister at forty millions* 
Suppose the quantity of bank paper, publick and private, 
circulating in England, to be about five hundred millions.. 
It receives between twenty and thirty millions, fur enrich- 
ing those, who export forty millions worth. 'The agricul- 
ture and manufactures of England, are enriched also in the 
same mode, by the sister of banking, so recently eulogised 
in this country for possessing these qualities. Above five 
hundred millions of debt stock, receives annually more than 
bank stoeki Of what is paid to two other members of the 
same family, named patronage and hierarchy, we have no 
account; but exclusive of the sum paid to hierarchy and 
banking, by manufactures and agriculture, to get rieh bv 
the bounty of this generous family, the supply of Iha saoVe 
year exceeded seventy millions sterling ; so that the scheme 
of paper and patronage, when matured, takes from ana 
about one hundred millions sterling, to enrich agriculture 
and manufactures, by enhancing the price of forty milHons 
worth of their commodities. 

And after paying all this money, it remains a question. 
whether bank currency does not moreover diminish prices, 
to enrich capitalists, at the expense of agriculture and mam? 
factures. In 1803, the United States contained something 
more than one-third of the people of Britain, and exported 
much more than a third of her official exports, and ft 



380 BANKING. 

that proportion of her estimated exports. The exports of 
Great Britain were swelled by the estimate of the minister, 
very far beyond the official returns ; and those of the United 
States, are rigidly confined to them ; therefore it is highly 
probable? that the value of exports, from the two countries, 
in relation to the number of people, did not fall short on the 
part of the U. States. Britain then, with a vastly greater pro- 
portion of this stimulating and enriching stock, exported 
the same or a less value Gf commodities, in relation to the 
number of people, than the United States. This is only to 
be accounted for, by balancing the exclusive advantages she 
possesses in fertility of soil, in manuiactural perfection, in 
machinery and in rich provinces ; with a drawback, aris- 
ing from paper currency Except for some drawback, 
these immense advantages, ought to have been accounted 
for in the comparison, by an immense superiority of exports 
in relation to the numbers of people in the two countries. 
As they are lost, it affords the strongest evidence against the 
assertion, that paper currency will excite industry, enrich 
manufactures or agriculture, or even benefit commerce. 

How can it do either, when paper stock draws from the 
national labour, more than the whole value of what it ex- 
ports ? How can it fail to be the most oppressive tax gath- 
erer, when it is able to take from a nation more than it sells ? 
If it is admitted to be a tax when it takes all, does it cease to 
be a tax, when it takes a part ? The ten hundred millions 
©f bank and debt stock, has made every soul in England 
worth to paper alone, eighty pounds sterling. Adding to 
the drafts of paper, those of patronage, civil, military and 
religious, the value of each soul to the system of paper and 
patronage, is about one hundred and fifty pounds sterling* 
The American and West-India slave owners are not task- 
masters, if this system, which has made freeborn English- 
men of threefold value to itself beyond African slaves, to 
their masters, is not a task-master. 

This stupendous mass of paper has been raised from a 
.foundation as imaginary, as that of the earth in Indian 



BANKING. 381 

cosmography, A man, by becoming a law-maker, contrives 
to make the reputation of wealth more profitable to him 
than wealth itself. If a true opinion as to one's wealth, 
ought not to plunder a nation, the rights of falsehood are 
thus made greater than the rights of truth. The means 
used by the credit men in England, to lay industry under 
aontribution, are used by the men of actual property in the 
United States, to lay themselves under contribution. The 
richest interest in the United States, is the agricultural. It 
does not hold by the tenure of its land, a shilling of the cre- 
dit which sustains banking ; and the small portion of bank 
stock it possesses, bears no proportion to its landed proper- 
ty. Yet it first mortgaged itself to enrich a poor speculat- 
ing interest by the funding system, under the delusion of 
supporting a false national credit ; and it again mortgages 
itself to enrich a banking interest, under the delusion, that it 
receives, and does not pay the profits of appreciating paper 
in the last, as in the first form. 

In other countries, if the rich are knaves, they are'not 
blind to their own interest. They inflict taxes, direct, indi- 
rect and intricate, of which they pay a part ; but they take 
care to receive most or all. If these taxes are paid to ar 
mies, churches, navies, pensions or sinecures, they are re- 
ceived by the rich or their children. The paper inte- 
rest in England, is willing to pay a small part of the enor- 
mous tax, drawn from the nation by paper stock, because it 
receives all ; and the landed interest of the United States* 
is willing to introduce this fathomless mode of taxa 
lion here, because it pays nearly all, and receives a small 
part. 

In the United States, the civil offices cost but little, and 
do not exceed the legitimate necessities of civil government. 
We have no armies, churches, navies, pensions or sinecures, 
contrived for the purpose of conveying to the richest class 
of citizens, the money drawn directly or indirectly from the 
nation. Stock, bank and funded, are the only modes hither- 
to used for drawing money from the many for the few ; and 



$9% BANKLNU* 

the rich agrarian law-makers have most unskilfully suffer^ 
ed the money thus drawn to pass into the pockets of falla- 
cious wealth. It is nearly true, that the rich class in Eng- 
land pay some and receive all ; and that the rich class in 
the United States pay all and receive some. The first, 
fleece labour and industry for themselves ; the other, fleece 
themselves for paper craft. Had the landed interest of the 
United States, laid out the nine millions a year, which it 
gives to bankers and certificate buyers, in a church, an ar* 
my and a navy, it would have made a provision for its yc 
ger sons, like the rich classes of other countries, according 
to the wisdom of this world; all other rich classes combine 
their own interest and prosperity with high taxes ; but to 
combine its own decay and ruin with taxation, by paying 
to paper stock nine millions a year, of which it receives 
but a trivial proportion, is a species of aeuteness in the land- 
ed interest of the United States, according to the wisdom ©i 
no world that I know of. 

It is true, that if the landed interest, in creating this 
annuity, had kept it for itself, corruption, oppression and 
party spirit would have been the consequence; such 
being the unavoidable eifect of giving away by law, a sum 
of money annually, eighteen times more valuable than 
the Yazoo speculation ; but as the landed interest pays 
the chief part of this annuity, it had the best right 
to receive it ; and its sons, crowned with mitres or 
with laurel, might have cultivated virtues which adorn or 
benefit society. In how many revolutions of Mercury, 
would stock beget subjects for a Plutarch ? 

Had the nine millions been laid out in official patronage, 
instead of stock patronage, the amount paid by the nation 
might have terminated there. But bunking, besides its divi- 
dends) possesses a power of causing the quantity, and of 
course the value of currency to fluctuate, by which it may 
impoverish and enrich, or tax and patronise, to a vast amount 
beyond its dividends; of this the nation can get no account. 
It is a power equivalent to incessant adulterations and puri- 



-BUSKING* S$$ 

flcations of specie, by an absolute monarch. Coin adulte- 
rated, or paper multiplied, buys less. Coin purified, or pa- 
per diminished, buys more. It would be dangerous for 1 lie 
strongest despotism to gather wealth, by causing gold to 
fluctuate, between twelve and twenty-four carats, several 
times a year. If this despotism was a merchant, it could 
by such a power, buy and sell the commodities of its sub- 
jects at what gain it pleased. The carat of paper money, 
fluctuates with it's quantity, and this fluctuation is at all 
times within the power of banking, and frequently produced. 
Being capable of greater repetition, it can enrich and irnpo- 
verish, beyond any practicable alternate adulteration and 
purification of coin, for the benefit of a corporation or a des-r 
potism. Paper currency can bo made better and worse 
more frequently by the magick of a bank, than specie by 
the furnace of a monarch ; but although the banking adul- 
terations can do so much more work, yet we do not believe 
it because we do not see the process, and only see the effect, 
in their amassing wealth with a rapidity and duration, far 
beyond adulterations of coin in any mode hitherto discover- 
ed. If a king of England should call in forty millions of 
specie, and pay it back in adulterated money, so as to rob 
the nation of twenty ; that freeborn people would probably 
cut off his head ; and the same wise-born people, are quite 
contented to be robbed of a larger sum annually, by the same 
principle. 

To illustrate the facility with which this may be done 
with paper, in a stockjobbing way, better than with specie, 
in a despotiek way (as a chyniical process, in the moist and 
dry way, can produce the same result) let us suppose the 
managers of banking to be buyers of the staple of a coun- 
try; wheat for instance. When the crop comes in, the price 
will be kept down, by appreciating or purifying paper cur- 
rency, by lessening the quantity. Under this influence, 
those who work the furnace, buy. The loss, like adultera- 
tions of specie, falls upon ignorance and industry. It is a 
Jaw of maximum, or for fixing prices, except that an in- 
terested party regulates them, instead of n government. 



38=1 BANKING. 

This incessant fluctuation, in the intrinsick value of bank 
currency, is at least more likely to favour cunning, knavish, 
calculating speculation, than simple, honest, thoughtless 
industry. Those who settle the carat of this currency, are 
buyers ; upon what principle to be found in human nature 
by the grossest credulity, can they be possibly induced to 
use this power, for the purpose of enhancing the value of 
the commodities they buy ? 

If the government of the fluctuation or carat of hank 
currency, was in the hands of a native mercantile interest? 
such an interest would undoubtedly endeavour to gratify the 
love of gain, by using it to buy as cheap, and to sell as dear 
as it could ; and it would be to a considerable extent suc« 
cessful ; but although it would appropriate to its own use, 
the whole mass of gain transferred by this fluctuation from 
the other interests of society, yet the nation would possess 
the consolation of reflecting, that its Joss remained at home, 
and would return to it, the species of retribution, arising 
from individual splendour, munificence and luxury. But if a 
foreign capital should acquire an influence over the quanti- 
ty, fluctuation or carat of bank paper, the wealth collect- 
ed by it will be drawn to a foreign country. This is not 
all the calamity. If such a foreign capital or interest, 
should be the buyer of our exports, a power over the quan- 
tity or carat of bank paper, will enable it to diminish the 
exportation price, for the benefit of itself, and its own coun- 
try. The degree of influence held by British capital over 
American banks, cannot be estimated. Whatever it is, a 
correspondent degree of effect must follow. It can dimin- 
ish the prices of our exports both here and in Britain, and 
increase the English profit on re-exportation. The whole 
diminution it can cause, in the price of any article, is its 
gain and our loss. If in the article of tobacco, for instance, 
this gain is made on re-exportation to other countries; if on 
that of cotton, on its return, in a manufactured state, in ft 
large amount, to this. 



BANKING. $&& 

A variation in the value or carat of money* defeats its 
genuine end, and usefulness. It is the measure of all pro- 
perty, as the bushel is a measure of grain. Permanency 
makes measures the vehicles of justice ; fluctuation, of 
fraud. If a fixed measure for some articles of property* 
will dispense justice and discourage fraud ; a fluctuating 
measure for all articles of property, must dispense fraud 
and discourage justice. False weights and measures will 
corrupt morals, and a corruption of morals, will overturn 
governments founded in good principles. If such is the ef- 
fect of a fraudulent mode of weighing and measuring pro* 
perty, by scales and measures, capable of being examined 
by the senses, and easy of detection $ what will be the ef- 
fect of measuring property, by a fraudulent mode, beyond 
the reach of the eye, and only to be detected by patient and 
deep investigation ? Fluctuating money makes all weights 
and measures false. By extending and diminishing price 
alternately, the utmost evil of false weights and measures is 
produced. A few men, whose interest it is to do so, can 
cause the carat of bank currency, to fluctuate without con- 
trol, account or punishment. When it diminishes the price 
of property (wheat for instance) twenty-five per centum., 
the effect to the seller is the same, as if the buyer had se- 
cretly added one fourth to the capacity of the bushel : when 
it increases the price co-extensively, the effect to this buyer, 
now the seller, is like cutting off one fourth of the same ca- 
pacity. And the managers of the fluctuation, or carat of 
the measure, may thus gain twenty.five per centum, unjust 
ly* by each operation. 

A fluctuation between the two steadiest measures of pro, 
perty, gold and silver, has at some periods trenched consi 
derably upon fair dealing, and produced oppressive conse- 
quences ; adulterations of coin, are partial and temporary 
aggravations of these consequences, which are never long 
endured, because the process is physical, and easy to de- 
tect ; and fluctuations of bank paper, from which the same 
effects in their utmost malignancy and permanency must 

50 



S8S BACKING. 

follow, are endured, because the process of detection is me- 
taphysical. 

If the senses cannot perceive, that the same moral cause 
will produce similar effects ; and that if a fluctuation in the 
measure of property, by the two first modes, brings oppres- 
sion, its fluctuation by the third will also bring it \ let 
the mind reflect upon the following supposition, congenial 
with this third mode. Suppose a corporation, exclusively 
possessed of the knowledge of assaying metals, to be endow- 
ed also with the right of coinage, without check or control, 
or any knowledge in the nation, as to the quantity of money 
made, or what it was made of. This corporation would re- 
semble banking in all its aspects but one. A banking coin- 
age, by managing fluctuation, or frequently changing the 
measure of property, may sell dear and buy cheap ; it can 
throw alloy into paper, by the medium of quantity, and 
take It out by the medium of scarcity, at the national ex- 
panse; but the coining corporation have no means of ex- 
tracting the alloy thrown into gold or silver, without suffer- 
ing themselves. Herein the cases ditFer. The coining cor- 
poration, can only fleece the nation by putting in the alloy, 
but the paper corporation can fleece it by taking out as well 
as by putting in the alloy. This power is an invisible agent, 
who pares, clips or sweats ^property at every contract, by 
making its measure contract or dilate according to his inte- 
rest. 

A nation must have permanent standards for measuring 
power and property, and perfectly understand their capacity, 
or cease to be free. If a legislature, though annually elect- 
ed, can invent a measure, for transferring either to them- 
selves or their faction, they will make it as capacious as 
they please. The office of our constitutions, is to take this 
identical power from our legislatures. A bushel of money 
absorbs power, or a bushel of power, money, as a bushel of 
sand does water. 

By fraudulent modes of measuring property, nations are 
lifiversally enslaved. Thus the feudal system enslaved. 



BANKING. 387 

The fraud consisted in accumulating land in the hands of a. 
few, under pretence of compensating these few for de- 
fending a multitude. The papal hierarchy became a tyran- 
ny from a fraudulent mode of measuring property on 
earth, hy the artifice of selling heaven. Patronage gene- 
rates despotism, simply from heing a fraudulent mode of 
measuring property; it is not an empty office, hut the 
wealth which it transfers or measures out from the many 
to the few, in which its tyranny consists. All these are 
modes of oppression, only because they are fraudulent modes 
of measuring property. They are indirect, but money is 
(he direct mode of this mensuration. Though money is li- 
mited to specie, and should possess the steady value of a 
known and fixed carat, yet these indirect modes enslave na- 
tions by measuring out property unfairly. But if money, 
the direct mode of measuring all prt*f**rty, can be made to 
fluctuate in value or capacity, by a few corporations, the 
operation in transferring and accumulating property, musU 
he infinitely more rapid, than the operation of any indi- 
rect mode ; and the effect infinitely more certain, It Is this 
operation whieli terminates in tyranny, wl*ethcr it is pro- 
d freed, dfrecily or indirectly, by fraud, accident or pretend- 
ed necessity. By ending in accumulation, sufficient to be- 
get a separate interest, the tyranny follows of course. 
Whether banking therefore is founded in fraud or honesty, 
in deception or sincerity, is unimportant to the inquiry 
So long as it is a mode of measuring property unequally by 
law, and not by industry, capable of begetting a separate- in- 
terest in a nation, it must produce, the eifect produced by 
the feudal, hierarchical and patronage systems ; because 
the effect of all three flowed from their being modes of mea- 
suring out property unequally by law, so as to beget a sepa 
rate interest in a nation. Throughout the history of the ci 
vilized world, the admeasurement of property by industry, 
has bred patriots ; by law, traitors to the liberty and hap 
piness of nations. "Will the form of a caliber, render a ball 
propelled by the same force, harmless ? Principle is the 



388 BANKING 

powder which produces the effects of moral artillery. The 
powder of banking is precisely the same, with that used by 
the feudal system, hierarchy and patronage, to batter hu- 
man liberty ; namely, a distribution of property, not by in- 
dustry, but by law. Wherein consists the oppression of mo- 
narchy and aristocracy, except in being such modes of mea- 
suring property ? Wherein consists the fraud of these 
modes, except in making this distribution, by the unjust 
measures, law, and fluctuating adulterated money, instead 
of leaving it to be made by the just measures, industry, and 
money of a steady and known carat ? 

We have supposed the case of one state, erected by con- 
gress into a corporation, with the exclusive power of sup- 
plying the others with bank currency. Let us subjoin to 
the supposition, the idea of the incorporated state being 
mercantile, and the others, agricultural. How forcibly 
are the effects illustrated, of a power in one dealer, to 
regulate the value of the currency, or the capacity of the 
measure, by which the price of property is regulated for 
both. The whole agricultural interest, unadulterated bv 
any commixture with the banking interest, occupies the 
precise place of the unprivileged states. In the case sup- 
posed, the oppression would not be borne for a moment $ 
because the suffering being would be equal in union, saga- 
city and power, to the inflicting being. It is borne in the 
ease existing, because the suffering beings, are unequal in 
union, sagacity and power, to the inflicting beings. Indivi- 
dual ignorance, passion and folly, is no match for corporate 
knowledge, calmness and cunning. To let loose upon a 
nation, a faction, enlisted and disciplined by charters and 
avarice, for the purpose of gathering money of individuals, 
is a project, equivalent to that of letting loose a veteran 
army upon an undisciplined militia. 

Banking exclaims, let individuals shift for themselves, 
A band of conjurers or robbers, requires only that indivi- 
duals should be left to shift for themselves. Individuals cau 
»ever defend themselves against associations, The design 



BANKING. 389 

of government, is to protect individuals against these very 
associations. The tyranny of fraud is not less oppressive, 
than that of force. All national grievances act upon indi- 
viduals A redundancy of circulating paper stock, collect- 
ing an enormous tax, must act upon individuals, like other 
national grievances. If the ten r uidred millions of such 
stock in England, was suddenly converted into specie, what* 
ever would fly away to other countries, would be the por- 
tion of currency, useless, and therefore oppressive to the ex- 
tent of the tax it gathered. The specie expelled by bank 
paper from the United States, was made by that paper a, 
redundancy of currency, useless, or it would have remained ; 
the tax paid for a paper redundancy, which cannot follow 
die specie, is an oppression similar to the English. We 
see in the example of England, the errour of an opinion, 
that the quantity of a paper currency will be regulated by 
national wants ; we see in America, that bank currency 
soon expels as redundant, a sum of specie currency, and 
takes its place to a far greater amount $ we see that this 
redundancy, though unnecessary and pernicious, can gather 
wealth for a separate interest ; to what amount, England 
has laboured in vain to discover, for a whole century* 
What expedient can individuals use to avoid these calami- 
ties ? 

Let individuals shift for themselves. What is this, but to 
exclude them from the benefits of government and socie 
ty I Unassociated, the bitter beverage, prescribed by the 
paper capitalists to the English manufacturers, must replen- 
ish their cups. There, capital thrives, and labour starves, 
Here, industry has hitherto regularly gained from capital 
possessed by idleness. This wholesome operation will Jbe 
reversed, as in England, by factitious capital, able to tax 
and out-thrive industry. It can as easily become the mas- 
ter of the industry applied to the earth, as of that applied 
to the products of the earth. The portion of a nation sub- 
ject to supply the income of a paper capital, is not in fact in 
a state of society. Union or association implies equality. 



#90 BANKIKG. 

But what equality exists between infliction and suffering, be- 
tween extortion and payment ? Can a society or association 
be formed of a party of masters and a party of slaves ? Those 
associated by law, cry out, " let those out of this legal society 
shift for themselves." Gentlemen, our policy intended to 
give an equal chance ts us all in shifting for ourselves, 
" Throw away the law charter tubes, contrived for sucking 
subsistence from those at work, as the vampire sucks blood 
from those asleep. However insensible we are of the ope- 
ration, as you distend we contract, and must dwindle into 
your slaves, if the process continues. If it is right that in- 
div- duals should be left by government to shift for them- 
selves, why is the enchanted mantle of law charter drawn 
over you, which makes those under its cover flourish, and 
withers all within th? reach of its shadow ? 

When Walpole '<int\ the whigs invented the paper system 
of England, the increase of nominal price it promised, pleas- 
ed the nation, and established the party. Inquire now of 
the nation, what pleasure the system gives them, and you 
are answered with groans. A party, called federal, in the 
United States, repeated Walpoie's experiment with some 
success, by exhibiting to the nation the phantom of addition 
al price, and giving to stockholders real wealth and power, 
at the national expense. And a party, called republican, 
incited by the pecuniary and political success of these pro 
genitors, are repeating the same experiment, to gain the 
same substances, by an exhibition of the same phantom] 
Yet it is notorious, that it is the circulator, and not the re 
ceiver of bank notes, who grows rich. No corporation ever 
asked a legislature, for the privilege of receiving paper. 
The British nation belong to paper stock, and not paper 
stock to the British natioa. The whole juggle is managed 
according to the arithmetick ofLaputa. Suppose a nation 
raises a certain quantity of exportable commodities, mea- 
sured by the universal standard, gold or silver, bank projec- 
tors pretend to increase the quantity to what extent they 
please, by substituting a paper measure. And if they can 



SAKKIffG, 591 

increase them a jot, by altering the mode of measuring 
them, it is confessed that they can increase them without 
limitation. For this project, the nation at first pays the 
projectors five millions worth of the commodities measured 
by the old standard. Thus the nation lose, and the projec- 
tors gain already an eighth part of these commodities. As 
the paper is increased, the opulence of the projectors and 
the impoverishment of the nation, eorrespondently follow. 
When the projectors gain twenty millions annually, the na- 
tion loses half its exportable substance, for a numerical 
phantom, by which to measure the other half. England 
gives the whole substance for this phantom. It is Wood's 
project in a worse form, as his half-pence contained some 
copper. 

The engines of Archimedes destroyed the Romans, 
whilst they could not see from whence their fate proceeded. 
Moral engines are for the same reason concealed from those 
on whom they play. And these moral engineers, mote skil- 
ful than Archimedes, often persuade their victims, joyfully 
to stretch out their necks to the stroke, like Turkish fana- 
ticks, under a persuasion that it will waft them to paradise. 

Taxation is a power, infinitely dangerous, and liable to 
abuse in the hands of a separate interest. In England, the 
noble interest cannot even propose a money bill. In Ame- 
rica, the banking interest taxes, raises or diminishes these 
tuxes, and pubiickly divides its collections, of about five mil- 
lions annually, under charters for long terms, without the 
knowledge or control of the people, or their representatives. 
Patriotism is even more fusible than conscience, in money. 
We know that those who rob nations, do really feel as if 
they were virtuous and honorable men, and would scorn to 
steal a shilling. Hence the danger of exposing ourselves to 
be taxed, directly or indirectly, by an individual or a corpo- 
ration. Feudal barons were liberal, and hierarchical dig- 
nitaries, charitable. Yet they oppressed nations by their pri- 
vileges, with a good conscience. This is the best morality 
to which banking can aspire. Our policy has exploded if, 



$92 SANKlft'6c 

by considering the criminality of injuring a nation, as ampli- 
fied beyond that of injuring an individual, by the whole ad- 
ditional extent of the mischief. 

Between accumulation by banking, and division by ex- 
eluding perpetuities and promogeniture ; between exclusive 
chartered interest and general social interest ; between 
publick and* corporate, or party influence over legislatures j 
no resemblance in principle, no sympathy exists. They are 
all contraries and antipathies. A republican will deride Mr* 
Adams's idea, of forming a quiet, permanent and happy go* 
vernment, with contrary and unfriendly principles ; and 
attempt himself to reconcile enmities, inspired by clashing 
pecuniary interests, at least as malevolent as those inspired 
by orders. Exclusive privileges, for gathering money, pro 
duce parties more hostile to each other, and consequently to 
human happiness, than exclusive honorary titles. From 
the spirit of discord and injustice, infused into nations by 
titles, arise the objections to Mr. Adams's system. Is this 
spirit most malignant whetted upon the warm and flexible 
bosom of honour, or upon the cold and hard liver of ava 
rice ? In what unexplored depths of intellect, is to be found 
the patriotism and consistency of zeal, against and for the 
same evil principle, selecting its most aggravateg forms, 
both for reprobation and eulogy ? 

Wealth, it was observed, absorbed power, as sand does 
water. Another figure may place the idea in a stronger 
light. It attracts, contains and discharges power, as 
clouds do the electrical fire. Nothing can withstand its 
bolts. Wealth accumulated by legal means is here spo- 
ken of; that within the reach of human industry, being 
like genial clouds, as incapable of attracting a dangerous 
surcharge of the moral, as such clouds of the subtile phy- 
sical fluid. Can Congress and the state legislatures, con- 
sistently with our policy, create bylaw, this electrical ma- 
chine, able to shock or destroy our constitutions ? 

Words hold principles, as sieves do water. In the words 
therefore* and not m the principles of our constitutions, 



BANKING i9S 

parties seek for the chartering power. There, although a 
power in Congress, to bestow an exclusive banking charter 
on all the citizens of one state, could not possibly be found, 
all parties have found a power to bestow it on a few of them, 
or on a few aliens. And under this construction of the 
words of constitutions, not containing a single word relat- 
ing to banking, people are lined, hanged and imprisoned 
with the common consent of judges, juries and lawyers, out 
of imitation to the English stockjobbing system. If legisla- 
tures can destroy political law or constitutions, by any mode 
not verbally prohibited, the exclusive right of the people to 
pronounce this law, or to establish constitutions, is a sha- 
dow ; as a specification of every mode for destroying con- 
stitutions by law, is impossible. In this right consists their 
sovereignty. The people may call as many conventions as 
they please for fixing the principles of their government, 
but these principles can never be fixed, if legislatures can 
destroy them in any mode not verbally prohibited. All our 
constitutions, recognise and labour to fortify this right of 
the people ; therefore an indirect legislative mode of des- 
troying it, must be equally unconstitutional, with a positive 
law for that purpose. 

If banking charters, like all other modes for measuring 
wealth by law, will change the nature and principles of go- 
vernments, they are as unconstitutional, and as subversive of 
the sovereignty of the people, as a law for creating a king 
or an order of nobles. The five millions at this time taken 
annually from the people by these instruments, have alrea- 
dy begotten a political power able to influence governments. 
This magnet for attracting power, grows daily. Anticipate 
its eifects, by contrasting the accumulation it may end in, 
with an equal division of property. Would the political ef- 
fects of the two measures be the same ? Would these contra- 
ries generate contrary forms of government ? If they would, 
then both are in substance, political or constitutional law, 
and legislatures have as little right to pass banking laws, 

51 



394* NANKING. 

for the accumulation, as agrarian laws, for the division of 
property. 

If it is contended, that the state and general legisla* 
tures, cannot pass laws for dividing property, but that they 
may pass laws for its accumulation in the hands of a char- 
tered interest ; or that laws either for the division or accu- 
mulation of property, are of an honest and genuine munici- 
pal nature, without possessing a capacity to model power, 
and change governments ; and if these assertions can be 
proved, we must proceed to the following argument 

The formation of society, and the alteration- of its con- 
stituent rules, are admitted by our policy to be rights exclu- 
sively lodged in the people, in which rights the government 
they establish have no share. It is also admitted, that the 
rights subsisting previous to the compacts -called constitu- 
tions, all remain, except those relinquished for the sake of 
forming, the government. Banking diminishes these remain- 
ing rights, by transferring a portion of them to a new so- 
ciety, not formed by the people. But the government has 
no power to touch rights, not surrendered by the people for 
its formation. It was lately stated, that if a legislature can 
hy law form a new society, to draw money artificially from 
the rest of a nation, that the residue of the old society was 
no louger in a social state. By the association of the 
people, the principle of an equality of rights may be 
asserted and established. By the association of the go- 
vernment, the -contrary and artificial principle of exclusive 
privilege, may be asserted and established. Property, by 
the association of the people, may be placed under the pro- 
tection of the first principle ; by the association of the go- 
vernment, it may be exposed to the depredations of the se- 
cond. The first association makes an entire nation ; the 
second divides that nation into two, privileged and unprivi- 
leged. The object of one, may be the general good ,• of the 
other, to make the general good subservient to private ava- 
rice. Both their principles and ends may be precisely op* 
posite. Suppose this new-formed little nation, had been 



HANKING. 595 

invested by government with a power of waging war, against 
the lives of the associates under the old compact ; would it 
p.ot have violated the rights never surrendered by the peo~ 
pie to the government ? Do charters to a few, for waging 
war against the lives or against the property of the rest, 
differ in principle ? Do not both equally violate the rights 
never surrendered by the people of the United States in 
forming governments? Where is the difference between 
taking away the arms ©r the wealth of the great nation, and 
giving them to the little nation ? Is it not obvious, that a 
new association, by which either is affected., however called, 
overturns the old association ? From that moment, no asso* 
ciation but the new exists ; because its operation makes the 
old association inoperative. The government which con- 
trives, will adhere to the new compact, against the old, con- 
trived by the natiou. Those without the new society, to 
which the government has deserted, belong to no society ; 
and those within it, belong not to the old society formed 
by the constitution, hut to the new one, into which they are 
formed by law. 

To illustrate the ease with which the principles of the 
society, established by the people, may be destroyed by a 
kinking fabiiek, reared by law, let us suppose Congress to 
create a bank^ in which the state governments should re- 
ceive allotments of stock, equal or superior to the state ex- 
penses. As it would be easy, by such an institution, to 
suppress all other banks, the capacity of this engine to pro- 
duce an income adequate to the end, is unquestionable, 
Would it not commute the constitutional policy established 
by the people, for a new policy growing out of such a law ? 
All the old checks and divisions of power would be over- 
thrown. The pecuniary dependence of the state govern- 
ments upon the people, would cease. The independence in 
their allotted spheres of the state, on the general govern- 
ment, would also cease. The state governments would be- 
come Wholly dependent on Congress for money, by the disuse 
?f the people to their taxes, which like poison administered 



$96 BANKING. 

in honey, would be too pleasant for ignorance to resist, 
Congress would see and use the influence thence arising, 
and the state governments would be such checks upon the 
general government, as those receiving salaries at his will, 
are upon a king. A charter of the general government 
would give money to the state governments, to gain a 
power inconsistent with the charters by which both were 
created. The political consequences of a proposal to sub- 
ject the state governments to a pecuniary dependence upon 
the government of England, would be at once perceived. Is 
there more danger that they will merge into the English 
government, than into the general government ? Would 
political or constitutional changes grow out of the remote 
cause, and none out of the near one ? Let us suppose that 
the general government should be made dependent for reve- 
nue upon bank stock under state law charters, and the peo- 
ple to be thereby trained into the habit of paying nothing 
towards its support. Would it have an influence upon our 
constitutional policy and endanger that government ? If 
such would be the effect of placing the general government 
under a pecuniary dependence upon state charters, the effect 
of the converse of the proposition is certain. 

If a foreign government should acquire such a pecu- 
niary influence over the state governments, the considera 
tions, that no political or pecuniary connexion existed 
between it and our people, and that it did not procure mo- 
ney for the state governments at their expense, by spread- 
ing a corrupted faction among them ; would present a fee 
ble resistance to its destructive effects upon our policy ; but 
no considerations equally consolatory occur in the case of a 
similar influence, possessed by the general government- 
The state governments being bribed to favour the minority 
nation created by the general government, a triple eonibi 
nation necessarily becomes the real government, and repre- 
sentation would be used as its instrument, just as it is used 
in England. Corruption would settle down from the head 
to the foot of the nation. 



BANKING. $97 

If banking would change our form of government in the 
supposed mode, it demonstrates the capacity of law for that 
end. Ifit could thus influence legislatures, it demonstrates 
its capacity to form individuals into corrupt factions. And 
if it would be dangerous to any society, should a foreign na- 
tion create a corrupt faction by a pecuniary influence within 
its bowels, it is more dangerous to it that its own govern- 
ment should do so, for the reasons by which the danger of 
an influence, foreign or domestick, over the state govern- 
ments, is graduated. 

The course of reasoning pursued by this essay, results 
in the definition, that a transfer of property by law, is 
aristocracy, and that aristocracy is a transfer of proper* 
ty by laic. Mr. Adams's book is eminently instructive, by 
proving that aristocracy has every where generated cala- 
mitous struggles between those who gained, and those who 
lost property. Besides the unavoidable atrocities of en- 
riched and impoverished factions, Mr. Adams proves by a 
multitude of examples, that the same aristocratical policy, 
will induce one or the other of these factions to destroy eve- 
ry vestige of free government ; the enriched, to fortify their 
fraudulent wealth and power ; the impoverished, to flee for 
refuge against many tyrants, under one. It is true that the 
banking mode of introducing these mischiefs, like the ba- 
lancing, will ascribe them to an inartificial texture of the 
machine, but it will not gain the long credit of other aristo- 
cratical principles, because its superior rapacity will hasten 
it on towards the usual catastrophe of political fraud, 



39B * 



SECTION THE SIXTH 



THE GOOD MORAL PRINCIPLES OF THE GO- 
VERNMENT Of THE UNITED STATES, 



Di understanding the defects 4>f our policy, we are ena- 
bled to correct them ; by understanding its beauties, we 
shall scorn the delusive attractions of its ostentatious rivals* 
Its actual dispensation of more happiness than any existing 
competitor, demonstrates its superiority to the existing 
world ; and testimony gathered from tombs, by title, or- 
ders and exclusive interest, or fashioned for the purpose 
which induced priests to fashion oracles* is not equally cre- 
dible. The Augustan age itself, invoked by monarchy to 
confront with republican government, is like the golden 
one, a fiction. It was moulded by those who received, not 
by those who supplied, the exactions of monarchy. A des- 
potiek and artful man, did not corrupt the talents of one 
age, to buy truth for the use of another. Truth is never 
disclosed, except by talents whieh are independent* and in- 
quiries which are free. Augustus was the monarch of the 
whole learned world ; Lewis XIV was the monarch of 
France. Had France contained the learning of the world, 
the age of Lewis, would have furnished the same evidence 
in favour of monarchy, as is furnished by the age of Augus- 
tus. We only know that the reign of Lewis exhausted the 
adulation, the purses and the liberty of his subjects, be- 
cause it is described by persons, neither his sycophants nor 
slaves. Of the Augustan age we now judge from such ma- 
terials, as posterity would have done of the reign of Lewis, 
upon the exclusive evidence of his venal panegyrists or dis- 
mayed dependants. 



XHfi GOOD MORAL PRINCIPLES i)t &C. 3&f 

It is by travelling from the court to the cottage, that the 
effects of political principles upon human happiness, can be 
computed. Hence, existing nations, can only confide in ex- 
isting cases. The cottager has no historian to commemo- 
rate his misery, and the historian of the prince is bribed to 
hide it. 

Soldiers and statesmen think the French and English 
forms of government the most perfect, because they are the 
most partial to their own professions 5 and strive to bend all 
freer forms towards these models best contrived for their 
own gratification, because that effect is the logician which 
defines their patriotism. The policy of the United States 
was contrived for advancing the prosperity of an entire so- 
ciety ; but it cannot be preserved against the power and arts 
of soldiers, statesmen, or separate interests of any kind, ex- 
cept by discerning the principles of government calculated 
to dispense general good, with the same acuteness by which 
the creatures of legislative partiality, discern whatever will- 
transfer wealth and power from nations to themselves, 

The moral, like the physical world, is subject to system 
and regularity. It is not left by Omnipotence in a state so 
uhaotick, as that the same moral cause, should now produce 
good, and then evil. Men do not entrust their sheep to 
wolves, because it is fabled that once wolves were not carni- 
vorous. The description of monarchical governments, by the 
minions of its frauds, or the candidates for its treasures, is 
entitled to the same credit as the description of the wolf in 
the fictions of poetry. 

The fact we have assumed, lies before the senses of the 
reader. Let him look at the monarchies of the present age, 
and then at the United States. Let him listen to the groans 
of other regions, and the exultations of America. Let all 
his senses go in quest of comfort and wretchedness. Each 
on its return will testify " that the effects of our policy are 
infinitely betteiy than those of any other."' The comparison 
at this time spreads over a vast variety of governments, 
founded in force or fraud, but exhibited in sundry modifi 



400 MB GOOD MORAL PRINCIPLES OF THE 

cations of factitious orders ; it therefore brings the whole 
group to the test of one, founded in a selection of good, and 
an exclusion of bad moral principles. The success of our 
experiment, confronted with an host of miscarriages, bes- 
tows upon its title to pre-eminence, the utmost degree of de- 
monstration, -of which the case is capable. 

The grateful task of ascertaining the principles, which 
have produced effects incomparably beneficial to the United 
States, is left by Mr. Adams to be discharged. Instead of 
their vindication, promised by the title of three volumes, 
he casts a glance towards the contour of our governments in 
one volume, leaves them in repose throughout two, and 
defends contrary principles in all. Compelled directly or 
indirectly to assail the principles of our policy, because they 
lay in the way of his system, a caricature or travesty ap- 
peared, when we expected a defence. 

Mr. Adams considers our division of power, as the same 
principle with his balance of orders. We consider these 
principles as opposite and inimical. Power is divided by 
our policy, that the people may maintain their sovereignty ; 
by the system of orders, to destroy the sovereignty of the 
people. Our principle of division is used, to reduce power 
to that degree of temperature, which may make it a bles- 
sing and not a curse ; its nature resembling fire ; which, un 
controlled, consumes ; in moderation, warms. The princi- 
ple of its division among orders, is to erect an omnipotent 
pow T er, able, like an irresistible conflagration, to consume 
every thing in its way. 

This radical errour forced Mr. Adams to overlook the 
prime division of power, between the people and the govern- 
ment ,• the federal division of power between the general 
and state governments ; and that beautiful division of elec- 
tion, by which an ochlocracy or mob government is prevent- 
ed; and to convert the subordinate divisions of power, which 
arc only details of these superior principles, into sovereign 
*rflers and virtual representation. 



eoVERNMEJTT OF THE V. STATES, 401 

Without either stating or discussing the principles of 
eur policy, Mr. Adams concludes, that they ought to be 
ehanged, because commotions and revolutions perpetually at- 
tend factitious orders or ranks. To ascertain this fact, he 
cites all the memorable forms of government, comprising 
the principle of factitious orders, furnished by the history of 
mankind ; and having indubitably proved it, he infers that 
our policy is bad, because it has rejected that principle. 

The surprise which such an inference would naturally 
excite, is assuaged by the address of substituting a theory 
of the British system of government, for its real operation* 
The sophistry of reasoning from a comparison between 
theory and practice, is obvious. The most perfect operat- 
ing government, may be made to look defective, compared 
with a fabrick, reared by the imagination. And by calling 
this imaginary fabrick, the British government, all the old 
prejudices in its favour are ingeniously ensnared, by the 
Aristotelian artifice of hypothetical systematizing. The 
mind can only be freed from these fetters by comparing 
realities. 

The history of ancient times is hardly more weighty, 
opposed to living evidence, than the wanderings of far*cy ; 
it is invariably treacherous in some degree, and comes, like 
oracle, from a place into which light cannot penetrate. 
We are to determine, whether we will be intimidated by ap- 
paritions of departed time, frightfully accoutred for that pur* 
pose, to shut our eyes, lest we should see the superiority of 
our policy displayed, not in theory, but in practice ; not in> 
history, but in sight. 

Mr. Adams reasons from hypothesis and theory, in his 
defence of factitious orders. He establishes by complete 
testimony, the fact, that political evil has been universally 
their associate ; but instead of suffering this effect, to lead 
him to such orders as its cause, he attributes it to their inar- 
tificial adjustment. Such reasoning is the errour of an- 
cient philosophy, exploded by Bacon. Rejecting hypothe- 
sis and theory, he travels by effects to causes, and from 

52 



%Q% THE GOOD MORAL PRINCIPLES OP THE 



TH] 



eauses to effects. To the use of this correct mode of rea- 
soning it is owing, that other sciences have advanced so ra- 
pidly since the time of Lord Bacon ; whilst political philo- 
sophy remained unimproved until the American revolution, 
because it assumed ancient theories for settled facts. 

The hasis of our policy, like the basis of modern philoso- 
phy, is the constancy of nature, in her moral, as well as in 
her physical operations. A frequent or long eoneomitancy 
between cause and effect, establishes a particular fact, 
from which we are enabled to infer a general law. A con- 
eomitancy between hereditary orders or exclusive factitious 
interests, and political misery, has constantly appeared 
throughout the annals of human nature ; and a coneomitan- 
cy between political equality and political happiness, has en- 
dured in America for the space of thirty-five years in above 
thirteen separate governments, making an experience equal 
to four hundred years, to which ought to be added near two 
centuries previous to the revolution, not in theory, but in fact. 
Hence necessarily results a general law, unless nature, in 
her moral operations, pursues principles the reverse of 
those, to which she strictly adheres in her physical ; and is 
capricious, arbitrary and inconsistent. If the fact we corw 
tend for is ascertained, and if from this fact a general law 
is discovered, it then becomes as certain and inevitable, 
that political misery, will be an effect of hereditary orders 
or factitious interests, as that light will be the effect of the 
rising of the sun. Let the intellectual, like the material 
philosopher, reason from facts, and the phenomena of mind 
will become as well understood for temporal purposes, as 
those of body. 

A law of nature constitutes truth. This would suffice 
for human use, if we were unable to discover how it became 
a law, as is frequently the case. If these orders or interests 
tend to excite, not the good, but the evil qualities of man ; 
the moral power which enacts the law, and the impossibility 
of its abrogation, both become manifest. It is as unnatural 
to expect, by artificial means, to cause such orders or inte- 



GOVERNMENT 03? THE U. STATES. &0l 

rests to produce peace, justice and happiness, as that any 
artificial arrangement of a society composed of lions., 
welve* and hears, would prevent the effects of their natural 
qualities ; because the natural qualities of moral beings (if 
the expression is allowable) such as hereditary orders and 
separate factitious interests, are not less certain and un- 
changeable, than those of these beasts. 

The inability of mere form or artificial arrangement, to 
defeat a natural law, even of the moral kind, is demonstrat- 
ed in the experience of the United States. These forms or 
arrangements have been frequently changed, and are diffe- 
rent among the states. But the irresistible power of the 
moral principles common to all, compels every modification 
to be subservient to its will. And the good effects under 
different forms, produced by the good moral principles of all, 
are an evidence, that evil moral principles cannot be made 
to produce good moral effects by the force of form or artifi- 
cial arrangement; it would be as possible, that a less me- 
chanical power should control a greater. 

A theory or hypothesis, cannot pretend even to plausi- 
bility, unless it is deduced from some general law of nature. 
One which sets out upon the foundation of hereditary orders 
or alienable exclusive privileges, violates the law, which has 
determined that talents shall not be inheritable, nor merit 
transferable. Let us endeavour further to apply this ob- 
servation to Mr. Adams's system, by comparing it with the 
agrarian theory. 

The idea of Lord Shaftsbury, adopted by Mr. Adams, is, 
4 * that the political balance of orders cannot be adjusted or 
maintained, without a balance of property." The perpetual 
changes among the holders of land, the most permanent 
and unchangeable species of property, renders this ingre- 
dient unattainable. And yet its attainment is obstructed by 
fewer difficulties, than a permanent and equal distribution of 
power and mental capacity, necessary to perfect the sys^ 
tern of orders. As the system proposes to produce good 
effects, upon no other condition than that of violating and 



40i THE GOOD MORAL PRINCIPLES OP THE 

controlling several irresistible laws of nature, it is invaria- 
bly unsuccessful. 

Apolitical equality of rights among men, on the other 
hand, is founded in a general law of nature ; and yet even 
this simple and natural system is declared to be unattainable, 
by thase who contend for the possibility of a political equality 
of rights among orders. That which they assert cannot he 
effected between two individuals, though it naturally exists, 
is proposed to be accomplished between orders, composed of 
multitudes. 

The ingredients of Mr. Adams's "theory, consist of an 
equality or balance of property, power and understanding, 
between orders comprising a nation. And yet all the disci- 
pies of the theory, will exclaim against the mischief, folly 
and impossibility, of levelling or balancing property among 
individuals. 

I agree with them in a disapprobation of levelling pro* 
perty by law ; but the difference between us is, that I ob* 
ject to the levelling principle itself, ^whilst they approve of 
its application to effect their theory* I contend that (he fol- 
ly and mischief of enriching orders, such as the feudal and 
the paper, at the expense of a nation, is at least equal to 
that of levelling property among individuals ; and that the 
impossibility of maintaining the equality they approve, is 
as great as that of maintaining the equality they condemn. 

Now if Mi\ Adams's theory of a balance or equality 
among orders, consists of three ingredients, neither of 
which is attainable, according to the laws of nature, it is 
itself a phantom of the imagination ; and yet the imagina- 
tion which fosters it. asserts that the system of an equality of 
rights, naturally existing, and actually operating, is im- 
practicable. The hypothesis of orders, to exist itself, re- 
sorts to one fiction, " a king cannot die ;" and to destroy a 
successful rival, to another, " an equality of civil righti 
cannot live." But several complete experiments, as effec- 
tually overturn the latter fiction, as a multitude have the 
former- 



GOVERNMENT OF THE Xh STATES. 40 5 

The excellencies of our civil policy, and the defects of 
ttll others, cannot be estimated, unless the language used to 
explain them is well understood; To the efforts already 
made for impressing a correct perception of the principles 
on which the reasoning of this essay is founded, we will 
therefore add another. To understand, we have analyzed 
the intellectual world into two classes, good and evil ; and 
to discover the members of each class, we fix their quali- 
ties, not by the hypothedek, but the practical mode ol rea- 
soning. If the fact appears by a satisfactory experiment, 
that the political moral being, called hereditary order, or 
that called exclusive privilege, begets the evil effects of 
avarice, ambition, faction, commotion, tyranny, or any 
others, we assign them to the evil class. And if by the ex- 
perience of America, the fact appears, that an equality of ci- 
vil rights, produces moderate government, or any other na- 
tional benefit, we assign this moral being to the good class. 
Having discovered by their phenomena the classes to which 
these beings belong, we conclude, that no human ingenuity 
can change the class or the nature of any individual, any 
more than it could change the nature of a physical being. 
And that it is as obviously erroneous to assert, that heredi- 
tary order, or exclusive privilege, will bless mankind, as 
that water will burn them. 

The possibility of effecting a classification of the beings 
or individuals of the moral world, and of assigning each to 
his proper class, by an impartial and careful investigation 
of phenomena, with a degree of accuracy, exceeding even 
the classification of the vegetable kingdom, is not incompre- 
hensible. And its importance seems to have heen sug- 
gested by divine intelligence, in having implanted in every 
breast, an auxiliary for the head in the prosecution of this 
science, of acute discernment, and instinctive integrity. 

Such a work, however, was neither within my powers 
nor design. To arrange a few of those moral beings, called 
political, by the test of facts ; and particularly those of 
which the American policy and Mr. Adams's system are 



406 THE GOOD MOBAL PRINCIPLES OF THE 

compounded | to ascertain the difference and the preference $ 
and to detect any fugitives from one class to the other, is 
the utmost I propose. 

« * Besides hereditary order, and exclusive privilege, plac- 
ed at the head of one class, we have swelled it by the moral 
beings, called legal religion, legal freedom of inquiry* 
accumulation of power, patronage or corruption, igno- 
rance, virtual representation, judicial uncontrol, funding, 
and political families, or an oligarchy of banks. 

In the opposite class of moral beings, we have placed an 
equality of civil rights, freedom of religion, and of inquiry, 
division of power, national influence or sovereignty, know- 
l'Hlge, uncorrupted representation, and actual responsibility. 
Tiiis enumeration of a few individuals is used to explain our 
reasoning, and not as including entire classes. 

We have attempted to prove, that the evil class, cannot 
be made to produce good effects, nor the good class, evil; 
and the superiority we contend for, on behalf of the policy 
of the United States, consists in this, that it is compounded 
chiefly of the good, whilst all other governments have been 
compounded chiefly of the evil class : so as to account for the 
blessings of the one, and the mischiefs of the others ; and 
to produce both a shining pattern and a shining beacon. 

The same mode of reasoning appeared calculated also to 
awaken publick vigilance, against the most dangerous 
means of changing the nature of a government. It may 
have been compounded of moral beings, selected with integ- 
rity and wisdom, from the good class ; but by transplant- 
ing into it by law, individuals from the evil class, these ex- 
oticks must change its nature. For instance ; let us look 
at our own policy, as it stood immediately after the adop- 
tion of the present general government, and contemplate the 
features or moral beings, to be seen in the faces of the se- 
veral constitutions, of which it was compounded. Trans- 
plant into it a sufficient portion of executive patronage to in- 
fluence Congress ; a banking oligarchy without a distin- 
guishing badge, influencing election 5 judicial irresponsible 



GOVERNMENT OF THE IT. STATES. 407 

Ety ; religion, printing and speaking, regulated by law ; aa 
unarmed militia and a standing army ; or any system oi le- 
gislation congenial with monarchy or aristocracy ; and say 
if our policy would be unaltered ? The change would be 
owing to an interpolation of political moral beings into it, 
taken from a class opposite to that which furnished its ori- 
ginal materials. 

It is necessary to keep in sight our policy, Mr. Adams's 
system, and the actual English government, to illustrate or 
explain the principles contended for. In all Mr. Adams's 
authorities, we find orders, titles or exclusive privileges in 
some shape ; but in none, the exact and permanent balance, 
without which Mr. Adams's admits them to be a curse. "Vi- 
cissitude, and not permanency, is their essence, as deter- 
mined by experience, and a constant succession of revolu- 
lutions is the dispensation they yield. The alternation was 
rapid among the Italian republicks. The aristocratiek 
scale, whilst loaded with wealth, talents, perpetuities, and 
superstition, preponderated against the democratick, light- 
ened with ignorance. In England the first being unladed by 
alienatioRS, and the second rendered more weighty by 
wealth and knowledge, an approach towards a balance be- 
gat evils, which drove that country for refuge into tlie aris- 
tocracy of the third age, composed of paper, patronage and 
armies. Experience declares, and Mr. Adams acknowledges, 
that the theory of balancing orders, has never generated 
the effects, which Mr. Adams thinks it capable of generat- 
ing ; whilst the theory of a division of power, for the ex- 
press purpose of subjecting governments to nations, has un- 
exceptionably succeeded in the practice of each of the 
states, and of the United States. This double experience 
defines the nature of the moral elements, both of the Ame- 
rican and Mr. Adams's policy. Ours, by suppressing the 
evil principle of privileged orders, begets none of those ca- 
lamities, swarming about every experiment founded in his. 
His, taking the balancing principle for its basis, has labour- 
ed in vain to draw good out of it, by the artifice of measur- 



-ft! 9 THE GOOD MOilAL PRINCIPLES OP THE 

branches, two executive, and two judicial. A power of suefc 
magnitude, as to be relied on tor national defence, imme- 
diately dependent on the people, and generally removed far 
from a subserviency to any other division ; this is the mili- 
tia, officered by the people, or by the county courts ; try- 
ing offenders by its own courts, or holding commissions du- 
ring good behaviour. Patronage, a formidable power, is 
divided in a multitude of ways, the chief of which consists 
of portions exercised by the people, by legislative bodies, 
and by a variety of inferior courts. Ineligibility is a spe- 
cies of division of power often resorted to. And throughout 
the whole distribution, our policy, as if on purpose to sub- 
vert the hypothesis of a triple natural division of power, has 
in a multitude of instances, invested the same organs with 
different powers ; such as legislative branches, with judicial 
and executive powers. 

As the government is divested by a multitude of divisions, 
of the ability and inclination to tyrannize ; so by the multi- 
tude and variety of its elections, our policy cleanses the 
sovereignty of the people of those defects incident to its ag- 
gregate exercise ; concluding that power, untempered by 
division, exercised by nations or their governments, is inva- 
riably the scourge of human happiness. 

What do we discern in this system of division to justify 
the hypothesis of three natural orders, or three natural clas- 
ses of powers ? To which of these classes can the division 
of election be assigned ? But if a doubt should remain, 
]e i the. reader reflect upon the inconsistency between na- 
tural powers or orders, and their responsibility. In pro- 
viding for the responsibility of political power of every 
complexion, our policy denies the truth of the position, 
which asserts, that political power is created by nature. . 

It establishes, with unexampled ingenuity, a double res- 
ponsibility ; of the people to the government, and of the go- 
vernment to the people; the division of election, is the ba- 
sis of the one, and the division of the powers of govern- 
ment, of the other ; by the first, the donger of a physical 



GOVERNMENT OF THE TT. STATES. ill 

accumulation of power, and by the second, the danger of its 
moral accumulation* is obstructed ; to prevent the people 
from acting in mass against the government, under the im- 
pulse of passion ; and the government from acting in mass 
against the p-ople, under the impulse of avarice and ambi- 
tion. The division of election renders it difficult to turn 
the people into an ochlocracy,* and the division of the pow- 
ers of government, renders it difficult to turn the publick of- 
ficers into an aristocracy. 

Political errour contains two extremes, both of which 
are happily guarded against by the principle of division ; 
aud it would make but little difference to the nation whether 
it was p! tinged into one, by abolishing the responsibility of 
the people to government ; or into the other, by abolish- 
ing the responsibility of the government to the people. Juet 
as the devastation of a furious torrent, and the exsiccation 
of a vertical sun. are both destructive, and both prevented by 
the divisions of a stream, according to the ingenious system 
of irrigation. 

It is important to inquire, whether the right of instruc- 
tion is attached to the right of election. Neither the moral 
right of any species of principal to employ agents, nor the 
moral duty of agents to conform to the instructions of prin- 
cipals in discharging agencies, is denied. Obedience to 
monarchical, aristoeratieal, military, legislative, judicial, 
and all individual instructions, from principals to agents, is 
universally enforced by dismission, sentence, iiue, imprison- 
ment and death; and disobedience is considered as illegal, 
immoral and void, It is also agreed, that the duties of agen- 
cy, implied or expressed, allowed to kings, to conquerors 
and to beggars, and enforced by the axe, the musket and the 
forum, belong also to the species of sovereignty existing in 
the United States. 

A constitutional declaration, that duty was an adjunct 
of agency, would have been as absurd, as that heat was an 
adjunct of fire. The qualities by which a thing is defined, 
must be included in that thing; and an assertion, that?' 1 



*iQ THE GOOD MOI1.4X PKIKCIPLES OP THE 

branches, two executive, and two judicial. A power of sucfe 
magnitude, as to be relied on tor national defence, imme- 
diately dependent on the people, and generally removed far 
from a subserviency to any other division ; this is the mili- 
tia, officered by the people, or by the county courts ; try- 
ing offenders by its own courts, or holding commissions du- 
ring good behaviour. Patronage, a formidable power, is 
divided in a multitude of ways, the chief of which consists 
of portions exercised by the people, by legislative bodies, 
and by a variety of inferior courts. Ineligibility is a spe- 
cies of division of power often resorted to. And throughout 
the whole distribution, our policy, as if on purpose to sub- 
vert the hypothesis of a triple natural division of power, ha» 
in a 'multitude of instances, invested the same organs with 
different powers ; such as legislative branches, with judicial 
and executive powers. 

As the government is divested by a multitude of divisions, 
of the ability and inclination to tyrannize ; so by the multi- 
tude and variety of its elections, our policy cleanses the 
sovereignty of the people of those defects incident to its ag- 
gregate exercise ; concluding that power, untempered by 
division, exercised by nations or their governments, is inva- 
riably the scourge of human happiness. 

What do we discern in this system of division to justify 
the hypothesis of three natural orders, or three natural clas- 
ses of powers ? To which of these classes can the division 
of election be assigned ? But if a doubt should remain, 
lei the, reader reflect upon the inconsistency between na- 
tural powers or orders, and their responsibility. In pro- 
viding for the responsibility of political power of every 
complexion, our policy denies the truth of the position, 
which asserts, that political power is created by nature. 

It establishes, with unexampled ingenuity, a double res- 
ponsibility ; of the people to the government, and of the go- 
vernment to the people ; the division of election, is the ba- 
sis of the one, and the division of the powers of govern- 
ment, of the other ; by the first, the danger of a physical 



GOVERNMENT OF THE IT. STATES, Hi 

accumulation of power, and by the second, the danger of its 
moral accumulation, is obstructed ; to prevent the people 
from acting in mass against the government, under the im- 
pulse of passion ; and the government from acting in mass 
against the people, under the impulse of avarice and ambi- 
tion. The division of election renders it difficult to turn 
the people into an ochlocracy, and the division of the pow- 
ers of government, renders it difficult to turn the publiek of- 
ficers into an aristocracy. 

Political errour contains two extremes, both of which 
are happily guarded against by the principle of division ; 
and it would make but little difference to the nation whether 
it was plunged into one, by abolishing the responsibility of 
the people to government; or into the other, by abolish- 
ing the responsibility of the government to the people. Just 
a* the devastation of a furious torrent, and the exsiccation 
of a vertical sun, are both destructive, and bofh prevented by 
the divisions of a stream, according to the ingenious system 
of irrigation. 

It is important to inquire, whether the right of instruc- 
tion is attached to the right of election. Neither the moral 
right of any species of principal to employ agents, nor the 
moral dnty of agents to conform to the instructions of prin- 
cipals in discharging agencies, is denied. Obedience to 
monarchical, aristoeratieal, military, legislative, judicial, 
and all individual instructions, from principals to agents, is 
universally enforced by dismission, sentence, fine, imprison- 
ment and death: and disobedience is considered as illegal, 
immoral and void. It is also agreed, (hat the duties of agen- 
cy, implied or expressed* allowed to kings, to conquerors 
and to beggars, and enforced by the axe, the musket and the 
forum, belong also to the species of sovereignty existing in 
the United States. 

A constitutional declaration, that duty was an adjunct 
of agency, would have been as absurd, as that heat was an 
adjunct of tire. The qualities by which a thing is defined, 
must be included in that thing ; and an assertion, that an 



i!2 THE GOOD MORAL PRINCIPLES OF THE 

insurance against fire, did not include an insurance against 
heat, would be equivalent to an assertion, that an agency did 
not imply an obligation to fulfil its duties ; or a right to 
raise armies, a right to arm them. Political law could not 
have deprived agency of its attributes, without extinguish- 
ing it; because, stript of its duty to its principal, its nature 
is as completely changed, as the nature of despotism, stript 
of its power. K 

The sovereignty of the people arises, and representa* 
tion flows, out of each man's right to govern himself. With 
this individual right, political structures are built. Indivi- 
duals, in forming a society, may arrange their rights in 
such forms as they please. They may, like the Greeks, 
lodge legislation in the society collectively ; and they may. 
in that ease, allow a representative to an absent individual. 
Would this representative be the agent of the individual 
who deputed him, or of the rest of the society? Would those 
personally present enjoy their shares of the legislative pow- 
er, and absorb as a majority the shares of those represent- 
ed ; or would each legislator be the agent of the majority of 
the society ? Neither of these intentions could, consistently 
with the supposed policy, exist, because the majority could 
not be ascertained, except by counting the individuals of 
the society. The English house of lords,\with the right to 
vote by proxy, is such a nation. The proxy is subject to 
the instructions of his principal, and owes no duty to the 
majority. 

Or suppose a society constituted in imitation of the Ro- 
man model, with legislation condensed into centuries, each 
entitled to vote personally, or by its representative. Would 
the representative of a century, be the agent of the majori- 
ty of centuries, by which he was not deputed, or of the cen- 
tury by which he was ; and how could this majority be 
known, except by ascertaining the opinion of each century ? 
If no century could vote by representation, each century in 
voting would be exercising not a trust but a right ; nor 
could it be the agent of a majority, because in every que? 



GOVERNMENT OT THE TJ. STATES. MS 

tion the majority could only be ascertained by the votes of 
the centuries ; and an agent cannot exist before a principal. 
If all the centuries legislate, not in person, but by repre- 
sentatives, the representative could not owe the duties of 
agency to the majority of centuries, both because his prin- 
cipal did not, and also because it is as impossible to ascertain 
this majority, as in the last case ; this can only be effected 
by counting the votes of the centuries, personally, or by re- 
presentation. Thus a duty to obey the instruction of an 
ideal majority, would divest the representative of the cha- 
racter of agent, and transform him into a despot, at liberty 
to pursue his own ambition, interest, caprice or vanity, 
without regard to any principal ; and under pretence of 
loyalty to a nonentity, convert representatives into a sue 
cession of despots over real majorities. 

Societies may give legislation whatever form they pre 
fer. They may legislate by the majority of individuals. 
They may allot themselves into centuries or districts, and le~ 
gislate by a majority of sections. Or they may legislate by 
representatives deputed aggregately or by sections. If they 
legislate in person, aggregately or in sections, this real na- 
tion cannot be considered as the minister of an ideal nation. 
If they legislate by representatives, chosen aggregately or 
in sections, the members of the society, are as much prin- 
cipals, whilst acting as electors, as they would have been 
acting as legislators, had they not resorted to representation . 
The idea that the whole society, acting aggregately or in 
sections, exercises only a ministerial authority, and not an 
inherent right, is not sustainable ; because self government 
cannot be the donation of the society which it creates ; and 
if election is a resource for exercising a natural right, and 
not the author of that right, this resource for preserving, 
could never have been intended to destroy the right, whe- 
ther it was exercised individually or in sections. Voting 
in sections is as compleat an exercise of the natural right, 
as voting individually. Election by sections, is equivalent 
to aggregate election. And by dividing election into sections, 



414 THE GOOD MORAL PRINCIPLES OF THE 

the rights and duties of principals and agents are also di- 
vided, because there is no other social principal to depute 
or to instruct. Laws made by centuries or districts, each 
having a vote, or by the agents of each, are binding, because 
.the society has adopted such modes of ascertaining the so- 
cial majority ; and the adoption of one mode, proves that 
no other exists. A division of the mode of exercising the 
natural right of self government, is extremely different 
from a division of the right itself. The first is indispensi- 
ble in a large territory, from the impossibility of assem- 
bling the nation at one place, for the preservation of the 
right. But to cut the right itself asunder, and to lodge on- 
ly half, or less than half, with the divisional mode for exer- 
cising and saving it, would certainly kill the whole. It is 
compounded of the powers of naming and instructing its 
agents. The instructing moiety is better than the naming 
moiety, as the right of naming an agent is no security if we 
cannot influence him; nor is it of much consequence who 
names him, if we can. If the divisional mode of exercising 
the right of self government, can only contain its form, but 
not its substance ; and the aggregate mode has been deter- 
mined by experience, to be unsuccessful in small, and im- 
practicable in large countries, the conclusion is, that the 
right itself must die. It can be held but not exercised 
aggregately, and it can be exercised but not held division- 
ally. " 

The objection to the district right of instruction, is 
founded upon the idea, that a nation, though it divides elec- 
tion, retains aggregately the right of instruction. But all 
natural rights are individual, and this individuality is the 
substratum of our policy. It has not moulded this indivi- 
duality into an aggregate right of instruction, but it has 
moulded it into a right of district election, without com- 
mitting the errour of withholding the natural appurtenance 
of election, and breaking up the relation between principal 
and agent, to bestow on itself the following hideous aspect. 
If the electing, punishing and rewarding district, and this 



/ 
GOVERNMENT OF TH& IT. STATES. 415 

rational majority, under which rebellious agency pretends 
to take sanctuary, should give contrary instructions, the 
chastening provision of our policy, according to the idea of 
an aggregate right of instruction, would have been an alter- 
native between committing a crime with impunity, or suf- 
fering a punishment for patriotism. The aggregate majo- 
rity would hold a right without the remedy, and the dis- 
trict the remedy without a right. But it is overlooked that 
majorities and their rights are creatures of social compact, 
and not endowed by nature with political power. They are 
compounded of men, excluding women \ of adults, exclud- 
ing minors ; of landholders, excluding those who have no 
land ; and in a multitude of ways. However compounded, 
they are a social being, and no social duty can accrue to any 
majority, but to one established by social compact, because 
no other majority exists possessed of any political rights. 
Admitting then the right of the majority to instruct, the 
right accrues to the social majority, and wherever that ex- 
ists in the form of sections or districts, the mode by which 
it can exercise its power, must be through the form in 
which it exists. Thus only can it elect, and thus only in- 
struct. Any other species of instruction, instead of a so- 
cial, would be revolutionary or rebellious. An appeal by the 
representative from the organized majority, to an ideal dis- 
organized majority, is therefore a violation of the duties of 
agency, And instruction from such a source, would be con- 
trary to the social compact ; inconsistent with the moral re- 
lation between agency and duty, and between crime and pu- 
nishment; and as impracticable as aggregate election. It is, 
however, necessary to consider, whether aright in the social 
majority to instruct its agents through its moral, covenanted 
and practicable channels, is necessary to preserve the sove- 
reignty of the people, or of a republican form of government. 
Out of the natural right of self preservation, sovereign- 
ties of a!l forms have collected the same right, as inherent 
without the formality of a positive stipulation. There 
never has occurred the least occasion to convince an aristo- 



416 THE GOOD MOIlll, PRINCIPLES OF THE 

eratieal or monarchical sovereignty, that periodical agents, 
above their intermediate control, would speedily subvert 
their sovereignties. Who ever thought of preserving life, 
by a perpetual obligation to swallow all the drugs adminis- 
tered by a periodical succession of doctors ? Would not free 
nations soon die of their doctors, when the highest fees are 
gained by the most poisonous prescriptions ? And to what 
purpose would the epoch of election return, after freedom 
was dead ? It is a question of fact precluding argument. His- 
tory abounds with the treasons of agents towards nations. 
Denmark recently, and France before our eyes, were be- 
trayed to tyranny by elected legislative agents. 

Without denying to our species of sovereignty the right 
of self preservation, we are perplexed as to the modes of ex- 
ercising this right by blending sovereignty with agency ; 
and the demonstration of the integral sovereignty of dis- 
tricts, as to legislation, is somewhat obscured by the idea of 
degrading them into agents, without discerning that it 
would exalt lower agents into sovereigns. Like the electors 
of the president and Maryland senators, once accoutred in the 
garb of agency, districts become subordinate, and evanes- 
cent ; and our sovereignty is dissolved, or embalmed by ver- 
bal syrup into a mummy, retaining only a periodical nomi- 
nation of sovereigns. No species of sovereignty can sub- 
sist, without subsisting attributes equal to its preservation. 
I am speaking of social sovereignty, and not of the natural 
right to resist oppression ; of organical, not of irregular re- 
medies. The natural right appears throughout history, to 
be the least successful guardian of liberty, and as frequent- 
ly the author as the destroyer of tyranny. 

An independency of district instruction, is assumed upon 
Mr. Adams's doctrine of virtual representation. That doc- 
trine recognises hereditary usurpers, as national represen- 
tatives ; the British parliament as representatives of Ame- 
rica, and each district agent as the representative of an en- 
tire nation. Virtual representation and a balance of orders 
or powers, are twin labourers for transforming our division 



GOVERNMENT OF THE V. STATES 41? 

of election and of power, into instruments for working end* 
contrary to those they were intended to produce. In search 
♦f power, it destroys suhordination and social order. Eve* 
ry civil functionary, starts up into a representative of the 
entire nation, none owes obedience to any other superiors, 
and the general and constable, have an equal right with the 
district member, to assume the independence it bestows. 

An incapacity of political law for producing the subor- 
dination of its agents to the sovereign power, would produce 
the same effects, as an incapacity of eivil law, for produc- 
ing the subordination of individuals to the government 
Murder, rapine or theft, would be but badly restrained, by 
an advertisement to culprits, that they might wallow in wick* 
edness for four or live years with impunity, after which the 
power of committing further crimes should be taken from 
them. Rings, though not among the wisest of sovereigns? 
never thought of this species of civility to deputies as a se* 
curity for sovereignty. A chain of subordination from sove- 
reign power downwards, is necessary for its preservation! 
and instead of snapping asunder the link between sovereign- 
ty and its highest agency, it ought to be the strongest, be- 
cause that agency is uniformly its destroyer, whenever a 
new sovereignty is erected upon the ruins of the old. 
Otherwise the sovereignty in its interval of torpidness, must 
submit to behold its agents, like Persian satraps, go to war 
with each other for itself. What, for instance, can pre* 
serve the rights and duties attached to the presidential 
agency, against Congress, but the sovereign of both ? If the 
sovereign is unable to protect some agents against the 
usurpations of others, the powers of all will gradually fall 
under the regulation of force and corruption, and ambition 
or casualty will supplant compact. Even mutual corrup- 
tion might cement legislative and executive power, in a 
league to destroy the popular sovereignty of our system, if 
it cannot act constitutionally at all times for its own preser- 
vation. 



418 THE GOOD MOltAX PRINCIPLES 03? THE 

Publick opinion is felt even by despotism. The best eu- 
logy of printing, is its facility for applying it. Election by 
districts is selected by our policy as the cleanest channel for 
conveying it. If party gazettes were more chaste vehicles 
of publick opinion, why were they not entrusted with the 
selection of legislative agents ? If they are less so, why is 
election to be stript of the appurtenant right of instruction, 
except to contaminate and discredit publick opinion, and to 
convert representation into a despot ? The best channel for 
electing publick opinion, must also be the best for instruct- 
ing publick opinion. And if popular sovereignty is even li- 
mited to that definition, the best mode of destroying it, would 
be to destroy, one after the other, the best channels by which 
it can be conveyed. 

If state legislatures are to be considered as holding each 
a dividend of an aggregate state sovereignty, their right to 
instruct their senators in Congress, would be equal to the 
right of a district to instruct its representative. But if each 
state constitutes a distinct sovereignty, its right of instruc- 
tion is equal to that of an entire society. It being admitted, 
as its form demonstrates, that this senate was created for the 
purpose of preserving state sovereignty. 

Oaths of agents are prescribed to enforce, not to destroy 
the duties of agency. If a popular sovereignty, and its ap- 
purtenance, instruction, exists in our policy ; and if no suck 
sovereignty can be found in it, except in the district form, 
the fidelity required by oaths must be due to (hat form of 
sovereignty, and not to one which only exists in the imagi- 
nation of the swearer. Because, if the swearer could fash- 
ion the oath to his own conscience or judgement, under the 
pretext of its binding him to pursue the publick good, as 
indicated by these guides,, instead of conforming his con- 
science and judgement to the established policy, the oath 
would not perfect, but dissolve the obligations of agency, 
and leave him at liberty, if he supposes it will benefit the na- 
tion, either to disregard instructions, or to legislate for the 
introduction of monarchy. If the oath is only n pledge of 



GOVERNMENT OE THE V. STATES. U9 

Royalty to pre-existing duties, these duties thus confessed 
by the oath are evidence of principal and agent, insisted up- 
on by the imposer, and admitted by the taker, which suffi- 
ces to refute the idea borrowed from monarchy, that our 
government is our sovereignty 5 and also to demonstrate 
that our sovereignty resides elsewhere. The punishment 
of rejection on a new election, is an additional proof that 
our policy by the oaths of fealty, so far from contemplating 
the idea of a loyalty of the swearer to himself, recognises a 
superior invested with power to apply a remedy for the in- 
sufficiency of the oath. And though the insufficiency of this 
remedy itself to compel obedience to instructions, is urged 
as an argument against their force, yet it is of the same 
weight with the assertion, that these oaths also are without 
obligation, because the mode of compelling obedience to 
them, is as imperfect as the mode of compelling obedience 
to instructions. The imperfection ©fa remedy, is no argu- 
ment against the right. The Saxon weregild, of fifty shil- 
lings, was a better security for the right of living, than an 
empty periodical election would be for the right of living 
free ; yet the ability to pay the fine, so far from justifying 
the right to murder, suggested the necessity of a better re- 
medy. A moral code, can only be perfected, by providing 
new remedies against crimes, when old ones become insuffi- 
cient. The right to life is not destroyed, by an imperfect 
remedy for its preservation ; and if the oath of loyalty to 
our sovereignty, with the punishment of rejection on a new 
election, are imperfect remedies for preserving the sove- 
reign right of instruction, new remedies, and not an aban- 
donment of the right, ean only preserve our moral code, 
called political law. 

As representation was intended to express, not to sub 
vert publick opinion, our policy resorts to sundry expedients 
for making representatives the genuine organs of certain 
districts, and for preventing them from degenerating into 
representatives of themselves, or of their own consciences, 
vices or follies. This degeneracy is a subversion of tlu- 



420 THE GOOD MORAS *RINCIFLRS OF THE 

republican maxim, that the right of national self govern* 
inent rests in the majority ; and transfers that right to a 
very small number of individuals, by using the maxim itself 
as the instpu?nent for its own destruction. Representation 
by districts, being the only social mode of ascertaining the 
wHl of the majority, and each district exclusively possess- 
ing the means of infusing its will into its own representa^ 
tive ; an end which our policy every where labours to at» 
tain ; the will of a majority can never be constitutionally 
ascertained, except through the regular organised chan- 
nel for that very purpose ; for if instruction by districts, is 
not a pure indication of the publick will, neither can elec* 
tion by districts be so ,• and no genuine mode of ascertain 
iag it exists. 

Let us now compare our beautiful system of dividing 
election, agency and power, with the multitude of forms of 
government quoted by Mr. Adams, Where do we see in it 
the aristocratick and plebeian casts of Rome or Florence* 
arrayed against each other by trivial accidenti, by the 
vile arts of factitious demagogues, or by the viler dishones- 
ty of separate interests or exclusive privileges ? It is in vain 
that Mr. Adams is forever quoting the mischiefs produced 
by any system of government, having factitious orders, arm- 
^d with the motives and passions which murder and burn ; 
or separate privileges, armed with statutes to plunder and 
tax | or national mobs, under the lightning of an orator's 
eye, within the melody of his voice, and drawn into ruin by 
all the chords of sympathy ; unless he can make us discern 
these orders, privileges or mobs, in our policy. These must 
be created, before his cases or his inferences will apply. 
Shall we create orders and exclusive privileges, to disco- 
ver the accuracy \vith which Mr. Adams has described their 
sffects ? 

It is the absence of these political causes, and an igno- 
rance of their effects, which has constituted a degree of po- 
litical happiness, throughout seventeen nations, unexam* 
pie*! in bistery* and unequalled in duration n r adding together 



GOVERNMENT O* THE V. STATES, *3£, 

the space of each experiment. So that Mr. Adams's very 
language is new and strange to us. He talks perpetually 
of the aristocratiek and dcmoeratick interest. An use fop 
this computation will be the era of those calamities, which 
have constantly attended it $ and of the application of Mr. 
Adams's precedents. 

To the regularity of the phenomena, reducing these con- 
elusions to moral certainties, for the sake of these who 
love authority, we will subjoin one of an eminent 'English 
author. Russell, in his Modern Europe, observes, « But an 
" equal counterpoise of power, which among foreign na- 
Si tions is the source of tranquility, proves always the cause 
* of quarrel among domestick factions.'** This counter- 
poise of power, among three domestick factions, is the only 
basis of Mr. Adams's hopes; if he should succeed, it is, says 
Russell, a constant prelude to a warfare between these 
counterpoised factions ; if he fails, Mr. Adams acknow- 
ledges, that the predominant faction becomes a tyrant. 
Was it the accomplishment of the counterpoise in Mr. 
Adams's numerous cases, which regularly produced Russell's 
consequence ? 

Had a balance of power, among orders or factions, caus- 
ed tranquillity, its absence would have caused broils and tu- 
mult. Tranquillity is one of the phenomena, arising from 
the unbalanced sovereignty of a single order ; and broil 
and tumult are phenomena, which have ever attended a 
division of power among orders. Democracy was quiet un* 
der the feudal aristocracy, the church estates under the 
popes, the plebeians under the late government of Venice, 
and the peers of England are quiet under patronage, pa- 
per and armies. Rut whenever an equipoise of power, or 
\m approach towards it has existed, as among the Grecian 
states, at Rome, among the Italian republicks, and former- 
ly in England between the king and the nobility, civil war 
and bloodshed ensued. 



* Modern Europe, vol. % p. 410 



422 THE GOOD MORAL PRINCIPLES OE THE 

It is impossible, that a balance of power among orders* 
sho ikl produce the same effects, as the preponderance of 
one. As the causes are widely different, so will be their 
consequences. And it is unphilosophieal to conclude, that 
the moral beings, ambition, avarice, rivalry and hatred, 
breathed into orders, by an equipoise, will, like the fear 
breathed into the people by despotism, beget political tran- 
quillity. 

Between the noxious alternatives, a warfare of orders 
and the quietism of tyranny, antiquity could discover no 
resource. The oscillations, both of political philosophy 
and vulgar prejudice, have been perpetual from one to the 
other, because miseries which have passed away, are gra- 
dually forgotten by miseries which are endured. And 
science, in this case, has been welded to ignorance, by the 
anguish of a common feeling, without searching for a reme- 
dy in the resources of intellect. 

The new idea of rejecting both alternatives, was reserv- 
ed for the new world. Instead of being a pendulum swing- 
ing between two eurses, and capable of no enjoyment, ex- 
cept that which a change of pain may afford, the United 
States have rejected both the calm despotism of one order, 
and the turbulent counterpoise of several. Oppression, ri- 
valry, civil war, ambition, and the whole tribe of moral ef- 
fects, incident to these alternatives, will either disappear 
with their causes, or tinctures of such effects will be so ma- 
ny intellectual beacons, notifying to the nation of good mo- 
ral beings, that their natural enemies are about to invade 
them. 

It was reserved for the United States to discover, that 
by balancing man with man, and by avoiding the artificial 
combinations of exclusive privileges, no individual of these 
equipoised millions, would be incited by a probability of suc- 
cess, to assail the rest| and that thus the concussions of pow- 
erful combinations, and the subversion of liberty and happi- 
ness, following a victory on thje part of one, would be avoidedc 



GOVERNMENT OE THE V. STATES, 423 

How fortunate it is, -that the two systems are so visibly 
marked by distinct principles, that wilfulness only will be 
able to view encomiums on one, in any other light than as 
censures of the other. 

It must however be admitted, that in our constitutions 
and political disquisitions, a struggle between the light of 
eur revolution, and the clouds of previous habits, is also dis- 
cernible. The numerical analysis, a balance of orders or 
of powers, and a social compact between nations and their 
governments, often bewilder us, so as to exhibit reason 
and prejudice, striving for a reconciliation. Our policy, 
says one, abhors and rejects orders of men ; but, replies the 
other, it loves and creates orders of power ; as if power 
could exist abstractedly of men. The didaetiek, dependent, 
subservient judicial power, is blown up to occupy a niche, 
in imitation of the English balance, as children imitate can- 
non, by the help of bladders ; and Lepidus is associated with 
Augustus and Anthony, for the sake of a triumvirate of 
orders of power, though he never can become a candidate 
for empire. Thus judicial power may be debauched with- 
out tasting the pleasure of sin ; and the nation is seduced 
into a reliance upon one balance against oppression, as 
heavy as the thunder of the Vatican and the terrors of 
excommunication, opposed to the power of Bonaparte. And 
for the imaginary social compact between the king and 
the people, one as imaginary, is also conjured up, to 
shoot other old errours into our new system of policy, by 
the shuttles of old phrases. 

The balancing system arose out of the ancient opinion, 
that the power of a government was unlimited. The Ame- 
rican revolution, in exploding that opinion, subverted its 
consequences. The discovery of limitations upon the pow- 
er of government then made, was improved to great extent 
in the establishment of the general government, and demon- 
strates, that the two modes for preserving -a free govern- 
ment, are distinct and incompatible. Unlimited power 
could never be estimated or balanced, because the human 



$2i THE GOOD MORA! FRIXCU'X.&JI Ott THE 

mind cannot embrace that which has no limits : but speci- 
fied and limited power, can easily be divided, and its effect* 
foreseen. A nation, possessed of a mountain of gold, 
which should bestow the whole upon three ministers, trust* 
ing to their oroils for its liberty, would pursue the old poli- 
cy ; by keeping the mass of its mountain, and entrusting 
agents with occasional sums, to be employed for its use, 
the new. The property in power, claimed \>y orders, caus- 
es their efforts for its increase ; and these efforts constantly 
produce the incurable defect of that system, by proving the 
poiat upon which it rests its value to be unattainable. 
Agents, pretending to no such property, are not exposed to 
the same temptation ; nor can their frauds and usurpations 
avail themselves of specious but spurious pretensions. The 
abuses of the old policy will therefore often find refuge in 
honest opinion ; the inexorable and patriotick adversary of 
those committed under the new. Every deduction of power 
from a compact between a nation and its government, is in- 
compatible with the right of self government ; nor can a 
policy which admits the first, be founded in the same princi- 
ples with that which asserts the second, No contractor, 
with the right of self government, can exist. A social com- 
pact, which is only an uniou of individuals, for the end of 
creating a government, ceases on the accomplishment of 
this end. The political society created by a constitution, h 
the only existing society, and the government is its agent; 
but under the natural individual right of self government, 
this political society itself may be dissolved. Until dissolv- 
ed, it is the master of the government, or the real political 
sovereignty; but the natural right of self government, is su- 
perior to any political sovereignty. The ancient notion of 
a social compact between nations and their governments or 
monarchs, alone sufficed to corrupt them. A right of con- 
struction being involved in the character of a party to this 
imaginary social compact, it might easily be modelled into 
an inexhaustible treasury of power, by the party always ac* 
tive and able to mould it into any form ; whilst the party 






GOVERNMENT OF THE U. STATES 425 

always sluggish, could never find it a powerful champion 
for liberty. Fortius ancient species of compact, our poli- 
cy has substituted a chain of subordination, suspended from 
its principle of the right of self government. Our political 
sovereignty is the first link, and our government the se- 
cond. The original right exercised its superiority over the 
social sovereignty previously existing, and over the whole 
herd of fictitious compacts between the people and the go- 
vernment, or between the states, or the states and the 
Union, at the last establishment of a general government! 
none of these governments had any agency in their own 
creation, or in that work. The state governments did not 
surrender, but the people transferred a portion of power, 
without their consent, from them to the general govern- 
ment, from the plenitude of the right of self government. 
Had any social compact existed, to which government was 
& party, it would by this transfer, have been violated. If 
these governments should frame compacts between them- 
selves, even for self preservation, it would violate our poli« 
ey, because it would impugn the sovereignty of the existing 
political society, and also detract from the national right of 
self government. Our political legislation depends upon 
the same plain sanction with civil legislation ; superiority 
and subordination. Uncorrupted by imaginary compacts, 
the right of the general or state governments to break the 
Union, though hy mutual consent, disappears ; nor can the 
interpolations of these imaginary compacts or balances into 
our policy, whilst the national supervision of its governments 
and armies, by election and a 6i well regulated militia" re- 
mains, have any effect but to countenance the errour, that 
the government of the United States is a monarchy in dis* 
guise. 

Religion, like politicks, has been inclosed within cer- 
tain dogmas, out of which the human mind was long unable 
to push its operations. The contest between the grossest 
errours and the plainest truths, was long and doubtful, after 
its first glances Guile and treachery, which constitute the 

55 



*26 THE GOOD MORAL PRINCIPLES OF THE 

philosophy of errour, caused an English archbishop to rfei 
sort to mimickry, relieks and ostentation, under pretence of 
perfecting a religious reformation, just as the political re- 
formation of the United States will be perfected, by the doc- 
trines we have been contesting. Doctrines, which would 
conduct our civil reformation almost back to the errour it 
destroyed, as happened in the case of the English hierarchy. 
A. comparison between these revolutions would furnish to our 
'subject many illustrations, but we must content ourselves 
with that between our policy and Mr. Adams's theory. 

One commences its justification in the language of para- 
dox, by asserting « that separate interests beget an union of 
interest." The other uses that of common sense, " a com- 
mon interest is union." One boasts of an ingenuity, capable 
of equalising political weapons among orders, with such 
dexterity, as to tempt them into hostilities, without end and 
without object. The other thinks it better to exclude the 
combatants themselves, because their battles add nothing to 
human happiness ; and because the boasted skill in measur- 
ing the weapons, has in no instance produced the miracle 
(like the suspension of Mahomet's coffin) of a perpetual bat- 
tle and never a victory. 

Contrast and superiority, were so visible in a compari- 
son between these ultimate principles, as not to escape Mr. 
Adams's penetration. Foreseeing that an opinion might 
prevail, unfavourable to the idea of producing a common in- 
terest by dividing a nation into sects, or a good sailing ship, 
by cutting her into three pieces ; and to the project of per- 
petual hostilities between factions without mischief or victo- 
ry ; he assails our policy at its root, for the purpose of prov- 
ing it defective? at the same place where he sees an incura- 
ble defect in bis own. 

Nedham's doctrine « that the people were the best guar- 
dians of their own liberty," presented Mr. Adams with an 
opportunity to try this experiment. He therefore replies, 
" that the people are the worst enemies to themselves." 
Hence, though warring or conquering orders, should ap^ 



CCVEKSMENT OF THE U. STATES. $$? 

pear to have been enemies to (he people in all ages, still 
they might be an alleviation of the superlative enmity. 

This idea of justifying a system upon the argument of a 
natural self enmity in man, is as strange as that of produc- 
ing unity of interest by division. The surprise it excites, 
is not diminished, by supposing that the enmity meant by 
Mr. Adams, was the result of errour or ignorance. In the 
present state of mankind, no arrangement of orders, could 
produce a freedom from errour, or an exclusivcness of 
knowledge. The aristoeratick order, therefore, whether 
this enmity is deduced from a supposed self haired inhu- 
man nature, from errour or from ignorance, would as pro- 
bably constitute « the worst enemies to themselves," as the 
popular; and hence this argument against one order, applies 
with equal force against another. The application theore- 
tically is equal, but practically unequal. If the calamities 
aristocracy has drawn upon itself in all ages, by crimes and 
vices, have been more voluntary than the sufferings of the 
people, this order is more justly chargeable with self 
enmity. 

The mode by which Mr. Adams provides against this 
self enmity in the people, is no less pleasant and paradoxi- 
cal than the enmity itself, or the idea of uniting a nation by 
dividing it into orders. Having contended for a natural 
aristocracy, as strenuously as old Filmer (whose notions 
Mr. Adams calls superstitious and absurd) did for natural 
or divine kings, but being unable to say " lo ! it is here, or 
lo! it is there," he is at length obliged to have recourse to 
a convention, to come, artificially, at a natural aristocracy* 
He draws a vail over the self hatred, folly or ignorance of 
the people, (whichever he means) and allows them self love 
and wisdom for one occasion only* provided that occasion be 
an establishment of his system of orders. After which, 
^elf love, wisdom and capacity to take care of themselves, 
are, like the bones of Lyeurgus, to be considered as lost 
for ever ; and as nature has decreed that they cannot be 
recovered, the system of orders is ingeniously furnished 



£28 THE GOOB MOKAL PRINCIPLES OF THE 

with a sanction for its perpetuity, infinitely stronger than 
the Spartan oath. Does reason or zeai dictate this project ? 

Our policy does not conceive that nature will sometimes 
create an aristocracy, and at others, by refusing to do so, 
leave its creation to the people. It does not believe that she 
deprives mankind of the qualities necessary for self preser 
vation, and yet enables them to judge correctly of Mr, 
Adams's intricate theory. Nor that she qualifies nations to 
erect governments for the purpose of establishing their 
liberty, and then disqualifies them for keeping these govern- 
ments to their duty. The idea, that the people may be 
once friends, but ever after enemies to themselves, is as 
remote from our policy, as from nature. 

The reader is warned not to misunderstand the applica- 
tion of the principle of division, as used by our policy and 
Mr. Adams's theory. Our policy divides power, and unite* 
the nation in one interest ; Mr. Adams's divides a nation 
into several interests, and unites power. By our policy, 
power having been first sparingly bestowed on the govern- 
ment, is next minutely divided, and then bound in the chains 
of responsibility. This discloses its opinion, that each part 
of political power is dangerous to liberty ; and because the 
whole is of the nature of its parts, the entire government is 
subjected to the right, asserted by our policy, and admitted 
by Mr. Adams to be capable of once doing good ; the right 
of the nation to influence or change its government. 

Our policy does not confide the powers withheld by the 
constitution, to the protection of any theory of balances* 
The government is not made amenable to itself. If it usurps 
a power withheld, by whom is it to be restrained ? " Not by 
the people, (says Mr. Adams) they are no keepers at all of 
their own liberties." And upon the credit of such an asser- 
tion, he contends for a government of orders, as if power 
would be a safe centinel over power, or the devil over Luci- 
fer. But our policy considers the physical force of an armed 
nation, and the moral force of election and division, as bet- 
ter centinels. Both arms, and the right of suffrage, ouglff 



GOVERNMENT OF THE V. STATES. &W 

however to be taken from the people, if they are their own 
worst enemies. The hypothesis which rejects the idea of a 
moral gravitation, and asserts that parts of the same entity 
naturally repel each other, is thought by our policy to be 
unphilosophieah Hence it infers, that it would be as wise 
and prudent t® entrust national liberty to the exclusive care 
of three guardians, all composed of political power, as a bag 
of money to three thieves. According to Mr. Adams's sys- 
tem, three thieves can never carry off the bag of money, 
because they can never agree about its division. Parts of 
power and of knavery, attract each other and coalesce like 
drops of water : drops, however, may be kept asunder, but 
rivers will soon form a sea. 

To excuse tills striking defect in the system of orders, 
Mr. Adams produces their virtual responsibility. This ac- 
knowledges the defect* The question therefore is, whether 
the remedy is sufficient. Virtual responsibility (as it was 
termed by the British parliament) can only be enforced by 
civil war; whilst actual responsibility may be enforced 
without it. Their difference is demonstrated in the eases of 
Lewis XVI, and the second President of the United States ; 
and the preference, la relation both to the nation and the 
magistrate, is obvious. 

Against the oppressions of Mr. Adams's hereditary rep 
resentatives, nations have no remedy but physical strength ; 
against those of temporary representatives, the moral force 
jf opinion suffices. The first remedy can never be legally 
exerted, because no government will make laws to punish 
itself ; to avoid which, these hereditary representatives in- 
variably disarm the people, and so make tlie remedy for the 
coertion of this virtual representation quite nominal. Its 
use is moreover prohibited by the dreadful avenger of re- 
bellion. Restrained by the dangers which beset it, the 
physical strength of a nation moves only in the paroxysm 
inspired by long suffering or extreme peril ; and it is to the 
overthrow of reason, by this paroxysm, that the frequent 
disappointments of national exertion, to enforce virtual 
responsibility, are to be ascribed. 



430 THE GOOD MORAL PRINCIPLES OF THE 

By our policy, actual responsibility is preferred to vir- 
tual, or to speak correctly, nominal. Conscious of the dan- 
ger arising from the physical force of mercenary troops, it 
insists upon the necessity of securing to the nation the only 
safe protector of moral or political power, in an armed 
militia; to prevent responsibility from rebelling against 
nations, by the same means used by monarehs and orders^ 
to prevent nations from rebelling against them. Under the 
protection of the physical power of a militia, the moral or 
political power reserved by our policy to the people, acts 
legalh and peaceably, by opinion and election ; and the rea- 
son of the nation can hare recourse to a degree of reflection 
and deliberation, unattainable during the confusion, the 
daigers, and the crimes of civil war* Without a sound nii- 
litiaj all popular rights, including election itself, must be- 
come tenants at will, of monarchical or aristocratical land- 
lords. 

Of the nature both of virtual and actual responsibility, 
no nation ever experienced evidence equally complete with 
ours. The multitude of cases, in which the states have en- 
force*] the latter, has given them infinitely less trouble, than 
any single enforcement of the former. When it shall require 
as much blood, treasure and misery, to remove a bad presi 
dent or a bad ^overnour, as to remove a bad king, we shall 
have exchanged our actual, for Mr. Adams's virtual or he 
reditary responsibility. 

The doctrines of Mr. Adams, which have suggested se- 
veral of the preceding remarks, are exhibited in the follow- 
ing quotations, that the reader may determine whether their 
construction is correct. 

" It is agreed, 5 ' says he, « that the people are the best 
" keepers of their own liberties, and the only keepers who 
" can be always trusted ; and therefore the people's fair 
w full and honest consent to every law, by their representa-i 
" tives, must be made an essential part of the constitution t 
" bat it is denied that they are the best keepers, or any keep- 
(i ers at all of their own liberties, when they hold callee- 



GOVERNMENT OF THE U. STATES, 43 i 

<* tively or by representation, the executive and judicial 
« power, or the whole uncontrolled legislature."* 

" An hereditary monarch is the representative of the 
" whole nation, for the management of the executive power, 
« as much as a house of representatives is, as one branch of 
« the legislature, and as guardian of the publick purse ; 
« and a house of lords too, or a standing senate, represents 
« the nation for other purposes."! 

It is impossible to utter a more positive censure of the 
policy of the United States than the first quotation. It as^ 
sails the doctrine of conventions, which invests the people, 
by representation, with unlimited power. It assails all our 
constitutions, under which the people, by representation, 
possess an uncontrolled legislative and executive power. 
And instead of the sovereignty fully, fairly and honestly al- 
lowed to the people by our policy, it limits their rights to 
the subordinate privilege of consenting to law. A law is 
irrepealable by consent, and one, obtained by surprise, ma- 
nacles a nation forever. This forlorn privilege of consent; 
accords with the English system, and beyond it all ought to 
be passiveness on the part of the people, according to Mr, 
Adams; if the polite concession of a nominal responsibility 
to them, does not in reality soften the assault upon the sor 
vereignty of the people, as being only a naked compliment 
of a right without a remedy. 

That Mr. Adams meant no more, results from a slight 
comparison of the two quotations. By one, it is said. « the 
* ( people are no keepers at all of their own liberties when they 
"hold by representation the executive and judicial power, 
4( or the whole uncontrolled legislative." By the other, 
'" that hereditary monarch s and a house of lords, arc in 
*< their functions, representatives of the nation." It is ex- 
tremely difficult to discern a valuable representative quality 
in a king and house of lords, which the people cannot hold, 
without losing themselves the quality of being " keepers of 

* Adams's Defence, vol. 3. 29.1 f Vol. 3. 367. 



432 TKH GOOD MOltA.1 FKINCIl'XES OF THE 

their own liberties." And yet the whole drift of Mr. Adams's 
reasoning goes to prove, that this aerial responsibility* 
which is so thin as not to be discernible between the as- 
sertions of the two quotations, is preferable to solid and 
real responsibility. 

But the theory of orders neither promises nor owes any 
species of responsibility to the nation. It literally claims 
an uncontrolled executive power. This is a manifest diffe- 
rence between that theory, and our policy. Ours proposes 
an union of interests among equal citizens, and subjects the 
government to the will of such an union ; that, a disunion 
of interests among equal orders, and subjects the nation to 
the will of this disunion. One looks for freedom and hap- 
piness, by making it the interest of the controlling power 
to be free and happy ; the other expects freedom and hap- 
piness, from a controlling power, compounded of ambition* 
jealousy and hatred, the gratification of which is the inter- 
est and aim of each part of the composition. 

This moral being, jealousy, is magnified by the theory of 
orders, into an excellent and safe political principle, for its 
own use ; and reprobated with equal zeal, whenever it is 
used by a nation. Nothing more strongly marks the cha- 
racter of the system than such language. Conscious that 
it owes no responsibility, it forbids the nation to be jealous 
of the government, and requires it to confide in the jealousy 
of the government of itself. 

The jealousies of nations and factions are however dif- 
ferent passions. The iirst is inspired by a love of liberty ; 
the other by ambition and avarice. The first is extinguish- 
ed by the virtues of justice and moderation, and returns 
love and respect ; the other can only be gratified by power 
and pillage, never can be extinguished, and returns hatred 
and contempt. The first is demonstrated in the existing 
relation, between the united nations of these states, and 
their governments; the other, by the eternal djseord 
among orders. That discord breeds malignant, treaehe -*■ 
rous, and violent tempers to fill the magistracy. Are men, 



GOVERNMENT OF THE 17. STATES, 433 

rendered miserable, by such evil moral qualities, the best 
agents for rendering a nation virtuous and happy ? Is the 
school of dissimulation, the school of liberty ? 

The history of England itself, is as fruitful in the 
effects of a jealousy among orders, as any other example 
quoted by Mr. Adams. It exhibits a series of efforts on the 
part of the nobles, to become independent of the crown $ 
on the part of the crown, to become despotick ; and on the 
part of the commons, to subdue the king and nobility. And 
we see that gallant nation, after toiling for centuries in the 
cause of liberty, take refuge from a system, founded in a 
jealousy of orders, to one, founded in the corruption of its 
representatives. The most perfect experiment, hitherto 
made, (as Mr. Adams believes) of balanced orders, is 
deserted for a system of force and fraud, as an ameliora- 
tion of its malignity. And the issue of the system of 
orders in this celebrated experiment, simply is, that 
whilst these orders are guided by jealousy, the nation is 
distracted, and when united by paper and patronage, it is 
plundered. 

The constant termination of the system of orders < Ise 
where, and its catastrophe in England, proves that a 
balance of power among them, is an unnatural speculation ; 
it is invariably disordered by a tendency towards some one 
simple principle of government. The question with the 
United States, was, whether they would try the mixed sys- 
tem of orders, and be conducted by this medium to one 
of these simple forms ; or whether, instead of committing 
their fate to accident, they should plant it in good moral 
principles. 

They saw that the mixtures of orders, without any ex- 
ception, after suffering the most agonizing throes, had 
brought forth monarchy, the ancient aristocracy, ochlocra- 
cy, or the modern aristocracy of paper and patronage ; and 
that it had in no instance produced national self govern- 
ment. They preferred that simple principle, which the 
system of order* has never produced, And our computation 

B6 



*34 THE GOOD MORAL PRINCIPLES OF THE 

lies between the preservation of this principle, and a pain- 
ful travail, through the organ of orders, to one of the prin- 
ciples it generates. 

Because certain publick functionaries, convene in diffe- 
rent chambers, or are invested with different powers, for 
the purpose of preserving the principle of national self go- 
vernment, Mr. Adams concludes that we originally adopted 
a very different one. An errour, which forcibly displays the 
power of opinion over maxim and precept. Self govern- 
ment, a maxim of nature, and a precept of our constitu- 
tions, has seen opinion, under her banner, bringing up the 
troops of contrary principles, to effect her destruction ; 
whilst she was told to her face, that she did not exist, and 
could only be created by a balance of power among three 
orders. When she sees an ambitious and mercenary 
army, possessing the exclusive military power of a nation, 
converted into patriots by metaphysical lines, for dividing 
it into three detachments; then let her believe, that 
three orders, exclusively possessing civil power, may also 
become subordinate to national will. 

Unity, harmony and proportion, are as necessary in po- 
liticks, as in the drama, musick or architecture. A tragi- 
comical government, a Corinthian capital over a Dorick 
column, jarring dissonances mingled with soft notes, an 
aristocratiek democracy or a monarchiek aristocracy, des- 
troy sympathies, proportions and melody. It is consistency 
which produces perfection in arts and sciences. Let us pro- 
ceed to inquire, whether it is to be found in either of the 
two rival systems we have frequently compared. And first, 
we will look into that composed of orders. 

It charges human nature with an insubordinate mass of 
evil propensities; thence it infers a necessity for vast power 
to curb them ; and it bestows this vast power upon human 
nature. Great power often corrupts virtue ; it invariably 
renders vice more malignant. Is human nature made 
worse, a good corrector of human nature ? Is vice cured by 
the strongest temptations ? History every where eontri- 



GOVERNMENT OF THE U. STATES. JbS5 

butes evidence, distinctly replying to these questions. In 
proportion as the powers of governments increase, both its 
own character and that of the people becomes worse. 

Our system does not attempt to restrain vice by provo- 
catives to vice. In destroying the evil principle, inordinate 
power, it has destroyed a cause of more vice, than human 
nature has ever perpetrated from any other cause. Having 
cut off the most copious source of vice, by disabling a go 
vernment from committing more iniquity than it can pre- 
vent, it finds no difficulty in curbing the petty class of mu- 
nicipal offences. It has not been induced by the fact, that 
one individual will sometimes injure another, to establish 
the cause of all those dreadful atrocities, which sweep 
away the liberty, the property, the virtue and the existence 
of nations. 

The project of hereditary systems, is to destroy the 
morals of one part of a community by power, in order to 
preserve the morals of the rest, by despotism. Hence it is 
compelled to multiply punishments for crimes which it 
causes ; and to defend itself against punishment, for having 
caused the crimes which it punishes. It corrupts the 
morals of the few, under pretence of restraining the vices of 
the many j and this corruption is a source of more vice than 
it restrains. 

Our policy takes a wider range. It is not so miserably 
defective, as to make one part of a nation worse, for the 
sake of making another better. It considers government 
as intended to improve the manners and happiness of the 
whole nation ; and instead of leaving half its work undone, 
proposes to iinish it, by providing for the manners and happi- 
ness of those who govern, as well as of those who are govern- 
ed. It applies the reason for civil government, not par- 
tially, but generally ; not to particular orders, but to na- 
tions 5 not to individuals, but to totals. This reason sim 
ply is, that the restraint of accountableness, improves the 
manners and happiness of mankind. Unable to see a dis- 
tinct/on in nature, between man and man, our system has 



£36 THE GOOD MORAL PRINCIPLES OF THE 

made that happy discovery, by which the salutary restraint 
of accountableness, may be extended to every individual of 
a nation. Instead of leaving some men to the guidance of 
an uncontrolled will or in a state of nature, it subjects all to 
law ; and instead of sublimating the evil qualities of human 
nature, to their highest degree of acrimony, by power 
unrestrained, it subjects it in as well as out of office to go- 
vernment. It does not attempt to prevent a viper from 
biting by irritation. 

Whether man is naturally virtuous or vicious, is a ques- 
tion, furnishing, however determined, no just argument in fa- 
vour of hereditary systems. If the most transcendent virtue 
is hardly proof against the seduction of exorbitant power, 
these systems, in their own defence, ought to prove, that 
mankind are by nature virtuous. If he is vicious, his 
restraints ought to be multiplied in proportion to his power 
to do mischief ; if virtuous, it strengthens the reasons de- 
rived from self love, for leaving moral power, where na- 
ture has placed physical. 

Estimated by its sympathies, human nature discloses a 
vast preponderance of virtuous sensations. It sponta- 
neously shrinks from an expression of rage, and is drawn 
towards one of joy ; w r hilst ignorant of the cause of either ; 
because one is an emblem of vice, and the other of virtue. 

Horrible or impious, as the atomical philosophy may be, 
it cannot be more so, than the idea of a natural depravity in 
man, rendering him unfit for self government. One doc- 
trine assails the existence of a God ; the other, his power or 
goodness. If man, the noblest creature of this world ; if 
mind, the noblest attribute of this creature ; are both incor- 
rigibly imperfect ; the inference that the world itself is a 
bad work, is unavoidable. Man's case is hopeless. If he 
is the creature of malignity or imbecility, and doomed to be 
governed by fiends, naturally as bad, and artificially made 
worse thau himself, where is his refuge ? Shall he fly to the 
hereditary system, which teaches him to despair ; or ad 
here to one y which inspires him with bo?ie ? The heredi 



GOVERNMENT OF THE U. STATES 437 

iary system! which having almost exclusively exercised the 
office of forming the human character since the creation of 
the world, very gravely urges as a reason in favor of its 
regimen, that its work is detestable. 

Upon tliis wretch, man, however wicked he may be, na- 
ture has unequivocally bestowed one boon. This blessing, the 
hereditary system proposes to deprive him of; our policy 
uses it as the principle of civil government ; it is the right of 
self preservation. No other government, ancient or modern, 
has fairly provided for the safety of this right. In all others, 
it is fettered by compounds of orders or separate interests ; 
by force or by fraud. Between governments which leave to 
nations the right of self preservation, and those which des- 
troy it, we must take our stand, to determine on which side 
the preference lies. A coincident view of happiness and 
misery, will presently transform this line, into a wide gulf, 
on the farther side of which, we shall behold the governed 
of all other nations, expressing their agonies. Shall we go 
to them, because they cannot come to us ? 

The restraint of governours, or the laws impressed on 
them by the nation, termed political, in this essay, eonstK 
tutes the essential distinction between the policy of the 
United States, and of other countries. Machiavel, in de- 
ciding that a " free government cannot be maintained^ 
when the people have grown corrupt ;" and in admitting 
monarchy, " to be the proper corrective of a corrupt peo 
pie," has reasoned from false principles to false conclu- 
sions, because he had not discerned this distinction. He 
supposes orders proper to maintain liberty, whilst the peo- 
ple arc virtuous ; and that they are hurtful, when the peo 
pie become corrupt 5 and taking it for granted, that liberty 
cannot exist without virtue, nor without orders, he dooms 
all nations to orders or to monarchy- If virtuous, he sad- 
dles them with political orders ; if vicious, with an avenger 
instead of a reformer. History has neither related, nor 
fable feigned, that monarchs or demons reform the wicked 
committed to their durance. His errour }ny in an utter 



438 THE GOOD MORAL PRINCIPLES OF THE 

ignorance of restraining governments. He never consider- 
ed whether a corrupt nation might not establish a free 
political system, as avaricious mercantile partners establish 
just articles of partnership ; and that it would be the inte- 
rest of the majority to do so, because slavish political sys- 
tems, inevitably prey upon majorities ; nor whether this 
interest, united with common sense, would not induce majo- 
rities, since they cannot be lasting tyrants themselves, to 
absolve themselves from tyranny. Orders and national 
virtue united, says Machiavel, produce liberty ; but if vir- 
tue disappears, liberty ceases. Others, split up this dogma, 
Virtue, say they, will produce liberty ; and without it 5 
liberty cannot exist. Orders, says Mr. Adams, will pro- 
duce liberty. If in the case of the compound dogma of 
Machiavel, virtue and liberty disappear, whilst orders re- 
main, the orders were not the cause of the liberty. If the 
virtue and liberty remain, after orders disappear, as in 
America, the orders caused neither the virtue nor the 
liberty. And if orders will produce liberty, according to 
Mr. Adams, the necessity for virtue to preserve liberty does 
not exist. 

This confusion arises from the substitution of moral 
artifice, which may be good or bad, for good moral princi- 
ples. Virtue, or moral goodness, may overpower an evil 
moral artifice, and for a short space preserve national liber- 
ty, against the assaults of a bad form of government. Na- 
tional virtue, pervading both the governours and people, 
like individual virtue, is a sponsor for happiness | and whilst 
political writers tell us that an assembly of good moral 
principles, embraced by the term virtue, will produce their 
natural effects, they say nothing in favour of evil moral ar= 
tifices. The general acknowledgement of the capacity of 
good moral principles to correct a bad form of government* 
is a vast encouragement to expect from them a capacity to 
correct bad governours ; and hence our policy has resorted 
to the good and virtuous moral principle of responsibility, 
jir a strong code of political law, which can exist and 



GOVERNMENT OE THE U. STATES* 439 

operate upon governours, if the nation understands its inte- 
rest, at whatever degree of virtue or corruption it may be 
stationed, in fact or in theory. 

If orders (a moral artifice) should become corrupt, they 
are then, says Machiavel, hurtful to liberty ; and he recom- 
mends one of these corrupt orders, a king, as a cure for the 
hurt. Bolingbroke observes, *" Instead of wondering 
w that so many kings, unfit and unworthy to be trusted with 
u the government of mankind, appear in the world, I have 
"been tempted to wonder that there are any tolerable ;"■ 
and «* a patriot king is a kind of miracle."f If the moral 
artifice, " orders," should become corrupt, MachiavePs 
remedy is Bolingbroke's miracle. These are ranked 
among the first class of political writers. " Nothing can 
restrain the propensity of orders to hurt liberty, but virtue," 
says Machiavel. " Good kings are not to be expected by 
the laws of nature," says Bolingbroke. Yet they concur 
in favour of orders. Each decides against his own reason- 
ing, because both being enslaved to the old tenet of the one> 
the few and the many, neither contemplated the abolition 
of orders or monarchy, nor the invention of a sound restraint 
upon the vices of governments, now practically illustrated 
in every state of the Union In fact, neither of them saw 
the difference between a moral artifice, and a moral princi- 
ple. Bolingbroke's alternative, of an elective or hereditary 
monarch, is unnecessary, because both are evil moral arti- 
fices, which may be superseded by a political system, 
founded in good moral principles. If inconveniences ap- 
pear in the United States on the election of presidents, it 
will only demonstrate that we have approached too near to 
the moral artifice, called an elective monarchy, and that we 
ought to recede from this bad moral artifice, nearer to the 
good moral principle of a division of power. Neither of 
these writers entertained the least idea of a policy founded 
in fixed and good moral principles, and have only laboured 

* Patriot King-. 88. f 11?. 



4i0 THE GOOIi MORAL PRINCIPLES OB THE 

like Bayes, in his dance of the sun, the moon and the earth, 
to invent new postures for the triumvirate of the old politi- 
cal analysis. 

Bolingbroke says, " that absolute stability, is not to be 
" expected in any thing human ; all that can be done, there- 
« fore, to prolong the duration of a good government, is to 
" draw it back, on every favorable occasion, to the first 
" good principles on which it was founded." Does he 
mean by carrying a government back to good principles, to 
carry it back to monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, or to 
some mixture of them ? Such was not his meaning, because 
these human contrivances are not principles themselves, but 
founded in, or deduced from principles. And whether 
either, or any mixture of two or all, is founded in good or 
bad moral principles, is the immemorial subject of political 
controversy. If he did not mean that a decaying govern- 
ment should seek for regeneration in some one of these 
human contrivances, the moral nature of which remained 
to be tried by the test of principles ; or that the test was its 
own subject; he has explicitly admitted the existence of a 
political analysis, both the ancestor and judge of the ancient 
analysis of governments? and also of every conceivable form 
which can be invented. Upon this anterior analysis, the po- 
licy of the United States is founded. We resort to it as 
the test by which to discover whether either member of the 
old forms of goverment, or any mixture of them, is good or 
bad. It is not a fluctuating, but permanent tribunal. Its 
authority is divine, and its distinctions perspicuous. And if 
it shall supersede the erroneous idea, that mankind are ma- 
nacled down to monarchy, aristocracy or democracy, as the 
only principles of government, the effect of diminishing the 
instability of human affairs, by a resort to unchangeable 
principles, may be fairly anticipated, 

Without considering * good principles," as distinct from 
forms of government, a return to them, for political rege- 
neration, could not convey a single idea. A government 
may commence in monarchy, aristocracy or democracy, and 



GOVERNMENT OF THE U, STATES, *4£ 

degenerate from either to another. Recessions to and from 
all forms of government may take place, and therefore 
these forms could not be intended by " good principles,'* 
because these fluctuating recessions would, under that idea^ 
make all forms good, and all bad. 

The inability of the old analysis to define a good form 
of government, and its destitution of some beacon by which 
to steer back u the harbour of safety, from an ocean of cor- 
ruption, is thus apparent,, It only tells mankind, when un- 
happy under monarchy, aristocracy or democracy, to go 
back from one to another, or to some mixture of them. 
Whereas the analysis of this essay, by arranging govern- 
ments according to the principles in which they are founded, 
discloses the mode of their preservation in a state of purity, 
and also the way to restore that purity whenever it is im- 
paired. 

Although the idea of going baek to first good princi- 
ples has been repeated into a maxim, it is seldom honestly 
explained or applied ; nor has it ever been confessed, that 
the phrase explodes the old, and suggests a more correct 
analysis of governments. Its correctness and power is illus- 
trated, by supposing that sedition laws, or a chartered 
stock aristocracy, are deviations from our first good 
principles. How is the deviation to be discovered ? By 
launching into the ocean of the old analysis and its mix- 
tures ? No. By bringing it to the test of the new ana- 
lysis, founded in moral principles. If it is thus dis- 
covered, how are nations to return to their first good prin- 
ciples? By taking refuge in monarchy, aristocracy, demo- 
cracy, or a mixture of them ? No. By repealing laws de- 
viating from its first good principles, One of these illus- 
trations will also serve to display the errour and fraud of 
the artifice, by which mankind have been persuaded to sub- 
scribe to the following syllogism — "Man caisnot possess free 
government, unless he is virtuous ; but he is vicious | 
therefore he cannot possess free government" — -so inge- 
niously invented, and so comfortably recommended in all 



*!<& THIS GOOl* MORAL PRINCIPLES OF THE 

ages, by patriotic k kings, ministers and nobles. Now if the 
banking system is a mode, however ingenious, of oppress 
ing a majority, that majority, however corrupt, may remove 
the oppression. And if the corruption itself, shall have been 
chiefly produced by the oppressing system, as is generally 
the case, then the removal of the oppression, is the true re- 
medy for the corruption. Not so, say Maehiavel and 
Montesquieu ; virtue being gone, freedom has fled beyond 
the reach of a nation, and oppression or monarchy is the 
remedy. 

The interest of a vicious majority to remove oppression 
from itself, is as strong as if it was virtuous ; and the coin- 
cidence between its interest and reformation, is a foundation 
for an honest politician to build on. If avarice and fraud 
are propagated by laws for amassing wealth at the expense 
of a majority, the pecuniary interest of this majority to 
destroy these laws, is the strongest ground for effecting a 
reformation of the corrupt manners they have produced. 
And the just laws of a vicious majority, in self defence, will 
have a wide influence in the re-establishment of virtue j 
whereas no corrupt minority whatever, composed either of 
orders or separate interests, can be actuated by self interest 
to enact just laws', the best restorers of good manners. 

There are two considerations which sustain this reason- 
ing. First, thtit man is more prone to reason than to er- 
rour. Secondly, that he is more prone to self love than to 
self enmity. Notwithstanding the first propensity, every 
man, however wise, is liable to err ; and an occasional er 
rour of a wise man may ruin a nation. The general pro 
pensity of the whole speeies, will usually impress its own 
character, upon a general. opinion, and is undoubtedly less 
liable to errour, than the conclusions of an individual. It 
is safer to confide in this propensity, than in individual in 
fallibility. One exists, the other does not. One is ever 
honest, the other often knavish. The force of self love, is? 
as strong in majorities, as in an individual, but its effect is 
precisely contrary. It excites one man to do wrong.- 



GOVERNMENT OF THE IT. STATUES *A> 

\ 

because he is surrounded with objects of oppression ; and 
majorities to do right, because they can find none. Their 
errours of judgement are abandoned, so soon as they are 
seen, whilst the despotism of one man is more strongly for- 
tified for being discovered. The old analysis intrusts great 
power to individuals and minorities ; and provides no mode 
of controlling their natural vicious propensities. Our poli- 
cy deals out to them power more sparingly, and superadds 
a sovereign, whose propensity is towards reason, and whose 
self interest is an excitement to justice. Such is the com 
petitorof the sovereign of the old analysis, of which even its 
advocate, Bolingbr oke, admits, that a good one would be a 
miracle. To avoid reasons, so strong in favour of our spe- 
cies of sovereignty, kings, nobles, and even mobs, have 
claimed a divine right to govern, because there existed no 
ground between the right of self government and authority 
from God. It was obvious, that a nation, like an individual, 
could never become a tyrant over itself, and therefore all 
abuses of good moral principles, whether in the form 
of the ancient analysis, or of the modern aristocracy ol 
paper and patronage, find means to control and defeat 
national self government, either by the impiety of fathering 
tyranny upon God, or by the fraud of admitting but evading 
Its pretensions. And though it is at length confessed, -that 
nations have a right to destroy tyrants, the difficulty of 
finding a tyrant willing to be destroyed, remains. Monar- 
ohy, aristocracy, hierarchy, patronage, and ambition, still 
urge ev&ry plea, however false, whi^h transient circumstan- 
ces may render plausible; even the paper aristocracy of 
the United States, though constructed of republicans, would 
surrender the sanctity of tyrannical kings, to secure a sancti 
tyfor tyrannical charters; and whilst it strives to find re 
fuge for the latter, under some good word, joins in frag- 
ging the former from under the throne of God himself. 

Although there is no middle ground between national 
and divine civil government, Montesquieu's position, ? tftal 
virtue is necessary for the preservation of liberty," has long 



-A4i THE GOOD MORAL PRINCIPLES OF THE 

deluded the world into a state of indecision-. If it means 
that the members of a society cannot form equal and just 
laws for self government, unless these members are vir- 
tuous, it is false ; but if it means that liberty cannot be pre- 
served without virtuous laws, it is true. That vicious men 
can constitute themselves into a society by laws, free, just 
and virtuous, respecting themselves, is proved b the asso- 
ciations of nobles, priests, merchants, stockjobber: and rob- 
bers, which are contrived, whether the members *re vir- 
tuous or not, to preserve individual social rights, And 'hat 
virtuous men cannot constitute themselves into a free so- 
ciety, by oppressive, unjust and vicious laws, is obviously 
true. As fraudulent laws enslave a virtuous nation, just 
laws will preserve the liberty of a vicious one. It is in the 
governing principles, and not in the subject to be governed, 
that the virtue or vice resides, which causes the freedom or 
oppression, But kings, nobles, priests and stockjobbers, 
have transposed this idea? and insisted upon the necessity of 
virtue in the subject to be governed, to create pretences for 
vicious laws to feed their own appetites. 

A nation cut up into orders or separate interests, cannot 
exert national self government, because the national self no 
more exists, than a polypus, after being cut into four or five 
pieces, which forage in different directions or upon each 
other. Suppose it dissected into four, the ennobled, mili- 
tary, hierarchical and stock; which of these could pro- 
nounce any other opinion than its own ? Each would con- 
stitute a distinct moral self, and could only entertain opi 
prions, naturally flowing 'from its own moral nature ; the 
ennobled, military, hierarchical and stock selves, must as 
necessarily have opinions, distinct from each other, as the 
English, French, Spanish and German nations. And these 
opinions would be more frequently contradictory, than the 
opinions oMiose nations, because the interests of domestick 
factions would more frequently clash. 

The experiments for balancing power among the na- 
tions of Europe, produce effects aaajagens to those 



[government of the u. states. MS 



balancing power among orders. Europe cannot be formed 
into one quiet government, because the different nations, 
having different interests, cannot form one political being. 
The supposed project of Henry IV. of France, for mould 
ing Europe into such a being, was therefore chimerical- 
Political orders, are as distinct and as inimical nations, as 
those of Europe. Of course they have never been com- 
pressed into one nation, having one interest, one will, and 
one self, all indispensible to self government ; but like the 
scheme of balancing power among the European nations, 
that of balancing it among privileged orders, produces plots 
or wars without end, until they end in a conquest and tyran- 
ny by one. 

A nation cut up into separate factitious moral beings, is 
compelled to use the means for enforcing municipal law> 
used by France and England to enforce European, law, 
The contest for predominance among privileged orders, 
*an only be restrained by standing armies, and these at 
length determine it, by declaring for one. Constitutions 
are only treaties between orders, where they exi^t ; and 
these treaties, like those between nations, are broken or 
evaded, whenever it is the interest of any party to break or 
evade them. Accordingly, the history given by Mr 
Adams, and by all others, of these orders or artificial 
nations, proves, that they are constantly making and break 
ing treaties, and that they have universally been more trea 
xdierous, cruel and malicious towards each other, than natu- 
ral nations. 

Mechanical or habitual applause, cannot preserve the 
policy of the United States. It can only be saved by tho- 
roughly understanding wherein its excellency consists. It 
it does not consist of a common interest, let any other eulo 
gist point out its distinction from the policy under which 
men have hitherto groaned. If it does, and if its capacity 
for preserving free and national self government, is thenar 
derived, it follows, that laws for cutting up the nation into 
distinct interests, will essentially destroy, without changing 



&&6 THE GOOD MOHAX jPRIXCIPLES OF THE 

a letter of our constitutions, or a shadow of our forms of 
government, 

But having discovered* that the superiority of our poli* 
ey consists of an exclusion -of separate interests, able to 
create factions ; that the good or the detriment of the com 
munity, may be the subject of inquiry in the several depart 
ments of governments ; it will be easy to detect laws, ap- 
pearing in the questionable shape of deserters from the re- 
gion of evil moral principles, and fraught with separate in- 
terests, or contrivances for distributing wealth. 

Of this nature, we have considered banking laws, Thej 
create an order, having above fifty millions capital, most of 
it consisting of nominal stock, called credit; a privilege of 
emitting national money ; and the powers of banishing na- 
tional coin, of governing commerce, and of deciding the 
Tate of mercantile individuals; it draws live millions an- 
nually from national labour ; ami is able to influence elec 
tions, and to corrupt legislatures. Is it for the good or the 
detriment of bankers, borrowers, creditors or debtors ? are 
questions, which pilfer nations, and stain the statute book ; 
whereas it is our policy to keep it clean, because upon its 
purity depends the national freedom and happiness, 

The history of Lace-demon exhibits a correct idea of a 
distinct order; that of England, of a distinct interest. The 
order of nobles, was the master of the order of Helots ; not 
individually, but as an order. From one order, the other 
drew its subsistence directly, because it was ignorant of the 
ingenious paper mode of taxation. The paper interest of 
England, is also the master of property and labour, not in- 
dividually, but as an order ; from these it draws jts sub 
sistence, not directly, like their Spartan prototype, but indl 
reetly. Both end in the same results ; each bestows lei-. 
sure and plenty on one order or interest, and labour and 
penury on another. But the latter operates the most pow^ 
erful effects. It outstrips its compeer, In a former part 
of this essay, a calculation was made of the hold it had got- 
ten upon the people of England, which is left behind whilst 



GOVERNMENT OF THE V. STATES, 14 7 

I am writing. The growing taxes, sinecures and dividends, 
will probably make each free born Englishman, worth 
three or four times as much to the stock order, as each base 
born Helot was to the Spartan, by the time this essay shall 
be read, if it ever is read. 

Let us return from this digression, if it be one, to the 
eomparison we have undertaken. Mr. Adams's system 
is incapable of a division of rights between a nation and 
a government. This idea is incompatible with hereditary* 
but conformable to responsible power. It is incompatible 
with natural orders, but conformable to natural rights. 
And it is incompatible with the opinion, that the people are 
no guardians, but conformable to the opinion, that they are 
the best guardians of their own liberty. Therefore his sys- 
tem annihilates that sacred effort of our policy, to withhold 
powers useless or pernicious ; and to secure rights necessa- 
ry for the preservation of liberty, or without the office 
of governments. Among these, the rights of bearing arms* 
of religion, and of discussion, constitute of themselves a 
measureless superiority in our policy, over any other, una- 
ble, by reason of different principles, to place them beyond 
the reach of government ; as we shall presently endeavour 
to prove. 

If a nation surrenders all its rights to a government, it 
cannot be free. Freedom consists in having rights, beyond 
the reach and independent of the will of another ; slavery, in 
having none. The form of the master, or his having three 
heads or one head, does not create the slave. It is on ac- 
count of the opinions ; that nations might be made free by 
the form of the master, and that the powers of a govern- 
ment are incapable of limitation ; that they have been so 
universally enslaved. From this point, a glance discerns 
the wide difference between our political system, and the 
British or Miv Adams's. The parliament, or orders, are 
theoretically and practically omnipotent. Such is the doc- 
trine of the British government and of the British lawyers. 
The government possesses unlimited power, and the nation 



4*S THfi" GOOD MORAL PKI^CIPJLiiS Of THE 

lias no rights independent of the government. The re- 
verse is the principle adopted hy our policy. It contends, 
that the power of a government may he limited, and 
that the people may have rights independent of the govern 
nient. 

To assert, without enforcing this doctrine, would be equi- 
valent to its relinquishment. Even Mr. Adams is willing 
nominally to admit it, in his virtual representative quality 
of hereditary orders. This idea is an admission of national 
rights independent of governments : bnt it confides them to 
the Custody of the idea only. How far they have been ac- 
tually secured by hereditary power, in discharge of its sup- 
posed representative duties, depends upon a fact, to which all 
history testifies. 

Our policy, dissatisfied with an unfruitful intellectual 
acknowledgment of the theoretical truth of this doctrine, 
has sought for the means of making it practically useful* 
It does not rely upon the most positive verbal renunciations 
of absolute power, or acknowledgments of national rights, 
without means in the hands of the nation, adequate to their 
enforcement. 

Here the attention of the reader is requested. We be 
iieve that one mode only of limiting the power of govern 
xnents, and securing the rights of nations, within the reach 
of human nature, exists. To this, our policy, and no other. 
has resorted. Its abandonment, would be a surrender of the 
doctrine, and the erection df a despotism, however the 
government is formed ; if a nation without rights, and 
a government without restriction, constitute a despotism., 
Therefore, the only existing mode of preventing it, de- 
serves a move attentive consideration than any other human 
invention. 

It consists simply in uniting the, sovereign, physical and 
political power in one national interest. If any uncontrolla- 
ble political power is held by a government, it will instantly 
seize upon an equal physical power by means of mercenary 
armies. But hy combining the supreme political powet 



GOVERNMENT OF THE U. STATES. *&9 

with the natural physical power of a nation, seasonable ex- 
ertions of the first, will peaceably prevent the ruin of the 
other. This union is effected, by a sound militia and elec- 
tive systems. The sovereign, physical and poiiiical power, 
being thereby inseparably united, national self government 
is perfectly secured. If one half of this sovereignty is 
tranferred to mercenary armies, and the other half to ba- 
lanced orders or separate interests of any kind, they unite 
for mutual safety against the nation, from which both moie- 
ties are taken. Election, without her ally, a national mili- 
tia, and united with standing armies, hereditary orders, or 
separate interests, such as banking, becomes an instrument 
to inflict their will. Equally unavailing to preserve liberty, 
is a militia, made subject to a political power beyond its in- 
fluence, because such a power can disarm, neglect, and sub- 
ject it to an army" of its own, 

A nation is both a natural and a moral being. Its natu- 
ral powers we call physical, its moral, metaphysical or poli- 
tical. If it is deprived of its physical power, it is like a man 
possessed of reason, bound; if of its intellectual only, it is 
like a maniac, unbound* If a nation is allowed the unin- 
terrupted possession of either, it will get the other* Yet if it 
loses one, it will lose both ; because usurpation is never safe 
with one only. Therefore an attempt to deprive it of either, 
confesses an intention to deprive it of both. If the attempt 
begins with an army, it ends with destroying the political 
power of a nation ; if it begins by assailing its political pow- 
er, with orders, separate interests or corruption of any kind, 
it ends with an araiy. A man who surrenders his reason 
or his body to another, is soon forced to make both con- 
formable to that other's will. To prevent mental slavery, 
our policy reserves to the nation intellectual rights, or the 
use of its reason; and to prevent physical slavery, it re- 
serves to the nation, the military power, in an armed and 
organized militia ; knowing that it must retain both or 
neither. Ry retaining both, a nation is a physical and in- 
tellectual being; By losing one, it becomes a being quite 



*5U iUE GOOD MORAL P1UKC1FJLE9 OF THE 

anomalous to human nature ; physical, and not intellectual, 
like a corps ; or intellectual, and not physical, like a ghost 
By losing both, it is annihilated, as having neither a physi 
eai nor intellectual power. 

We cannot condescend to enter the lists with the wicked 
artifice of destroying nations, by a fraudulent use of words 
and phrases ;' such as licentiousness, sedition, privilege, 
charter and conventicle ; because a nation, capable of being 
subdued by these feeble instruments, is incapable of liberty, 
as a man is of long life, who can be persuaded to hold out 
his throat to the knife of an assassin, lest he should cut it 
himself. 

It would swell this essay beyond the contemplated size, 
10 enumerate and explain all the rights held by the people 
of the United States independently of their government- 
Such a work would however be extremely useful, for in- 
structing us in the principles of our policy, and for demon- 
strating that these rights are so linked together, that not a 
single link can be removed, without materially impairing 
the strength of the chain. 

But the dexterity of the artifice, w r hich inculcates an 
opinion, already contested, that if the link of election re- 
mains, it will alone constitute a security for liberty, as strong 
as the entire chain of these rights, induces me to select 
the rights of a real national militia, and of a freedom of reli- 
gion, of speech and of the press, both to display the vast su 
periority of our policy over any other, in their recognition ; 
and also to prove that the strength and efficacy of the right 
of election, is itself dependent on the real operation of other 
tights. 

It is a principle of our policy, that the military should 
be subordinate to the civil power. Why was this subordi- 
nation required, and how is it to be enforced ? It was re- 
quired on account of the universal insubordination of mer- 
cenary armies, to every species of civil power, not their ac- 
complice in oppression. Not that soldiers are more cruel, 
avaricious or tyrannical than priests, stockjobbers or 



GOVERNMENT OF THE 17. STATES liSI 

aobles, for the contrary is the fact ; but because a military 
is a separate interest* subsisting on the nation. The militia 
being nearly the nation itself, is the solitary appendage of 
eivil power hy which this principle of our policy can be en- 
forced. If it is rendered incompetent to this end, election, 
a mere moral power, has no remaining ally able to save it, 
and hence almost every composition, constituting the code 
of our policy, has asserted the indispensible necessity of a 
well regulated militia. 

The supremacy of civil power over military, is a stipu- 
lation in vindication of national self government, or a sove- 
reignty of the people. We know that from the beginning 
of the world to this day, the military sovereign has univer- 
sally been the civil sovereign, and therefore our policy ne- 
ver intended to sever civil and military power, so as to in- 
vest the people with the first, and to divest them of the se- 
cond moiety of sovereignty. 

Let us suppose a nation to have held both a civil and 
military sovereignty, one by election, and the other by an 
armed and trained mililia ; and that the latter was at length 
transplanted into the hands of its government, by disarm- 
ing and disorganizing the militia, and raising a standing 
army, under any pretence whatsoever. The people retain 
ihe civil, and the government has gotten the military sove- 
reignty. Is election without its ally, what it was with it I 
A nation voting under the protection of an army raised by 
ks own government, is not a new spectacle. Yve see it in 
France. A protector is unexeeptionably a master. A nak- 
ed permisssion to keep and bear arms, is an insufficient ally 
of election or civil sovereignty. Doctor Franklin indeed 
used it as a resource for evading the religious scruples of a 
Pennsylvania assembly, but found it an inadequate defence 
against the feeble incursions of ignorant savages ; and it 
would be infinitely less adequate to restrain the daring 
usurpations of an artful government. Without a " well 
regulated militia," the military sovereignty of a nation, ex- 
actly resembles its oWil sovereignty under a government of 



>52 TUB GOOD MORAL PRINCIPLES OF THE 

hereditary orders. Hereditary kings and nobles, says Mr. 
Adams* are civil representatives of nations ; well, let stand- 
ing armies become their military representatives, and both 
their military and civil sovereignty will stand on the same 
ground, and reap the fruits of the same species of repre- 
sentation. 

Neither the British nor Mr. Adams's system provides 
for any species of military sovereignty in tiie people. The 
English orders disarm the people, Mr. Adams acknowled- 
ges their sovereignty, is silent as to a militia, and gives them 
hereditary representatives, Our policy endeavours to com- 
bine a real militia with an elected temporary representa- 
tion. It is whimsical to hear the British system talk of 
the sovereignty of the people. A lunatick only, can be per- 
suaded that he is a king, by a crown of straw. 

It is remarkable, that almost all governments, having 
a power to raise and pay standing armies, have neglected a 
militia. A power of resorting to the first mode of self de- 
fence, has created insurmountable objections to the second. 
Congress has power « to raise and support armies," and 
" to organize, arm and discipline the militia.' 9 Like other 
governments possessing the first, it has been unable to dis- 
cover any mode of executing the second. The profound 
wisdom and admirable foresight of our policy, in providing 
a remedy for this indisposition to create a sound militia, me- 
rits an encomium, in which none other, ancient or modern, 
can pretend to any share. Other systems of government, 
in bestowing a power to raise mercenary armies, have bes- 
towed an indisposition to cultivate a militia"; ours has left 
with the state governments a power to cultivate a militia, 
and withheld from them that of raising mercenary armies. 
As no governments can exist without military protection, 
and as a militia constitutes that, to which alone the state 
governments can resort, they must make it adequate to the 
end or perish. Viewed as rivals, the general government 
seems to have possessed a distinct, and the states an obscure 
Idea on this subject. By protecting them with a mercenary 



GOVERNMENT t 0F THE V. STATES. 453 

army? and neglecting the establishment of a sound militia, 
the general government would inevitably become the judge 
and jury of the state governments; because they have no 
mode of effecting a subordination of the military to their 
civil power, except by a well regulated militia. The histo- 
ry of the world exhibits but a single nation which has 
maintained its independence against conquerors. It was in- 
ferior to its enemies in number, possessed a worse country, 
and is imprisoned by the ocean. But being unable to main- 
tain mercenary armies, and forced to resort to national self 
defence, the twin brother of national self government, its 
militia won the crown of bravery by a long course of splen- 
did actions, and the nation, the exclusive honour of never 
having been subdued. 

The ability of our policy, to leave to men a perfect right 
to conscience, is an advantage which the system of orders 
has never been able to reach ; and when we see that system 
unable to secure this right, so extremely foreign to the of- 
fice of governments, and so extremely valuable to the hap- 
piness of men ; the conclusion, that the theory itself is un- 
able in its nature and principles, to secure to nations or in- 
dividuals any rights whatsoever, which the government 
cannot invade and destroy, is unavoidable. 

By our policy, mankind possess the right of worshipping 
the Creator of the universe ; by the English, they are com- 
pellable to worship the God by law established. By one, 
revelation is assigned to the paraphrase of the head and the 
heart ; by the other, to that of pains and penalties. By 
one, an expectation of individual retribution, is considered 
as a good reason for leaving each man to work out his own 
salvation ; the project of the other, is to take a chance for 
national salvation, by compressing a whole people within the 
pale of one faith. It is unaccountable, that the same sys- 
tem, should with equal zeal exert itself* against the division 
of national interest, as to eternal concerns, and against its 
union as to temporal. If a common interest in the next 
world is so desirable, why is a nation to be cut up in this, 
Into orders and exclusive privileges ? 



-k&k THE GOOD MORAX PRINCIPLES 01 THE 

An idol of metal or stone, differs from an idol of the 
imagination, in being more permanent and comprehensible \ 
and its worshipper possesses an inestimable advantage over 
the worshipper of an idol of the imagination, in being able 
to convert it into an emblem of any object of adoration he 
pleases. Dogma, more cunning than wooden gods, deprives 
the conscience of this resource. The Pagan mythology 
was ingeniously rendered a complete liberty of conscience, 
by considering each idol as emblematical of some divine at- 
tribute x and he who worshipped all, only paid his adorations 
to all these attributes. Neptune was an emblem of the 
Deity's power over the ocean : Minerva, of his justice ; Ce- 
res, of his bounty. 

Hence arose the difference in temporal consequences, 
produced by solid and imaginary images; namely, festivity 
ami mildness i bloodshed and persecution. The fancy is 
unable to adorn hideous tenets, with the agreeable illusions 
inspired by the Venus of Praxiteles, nor can the mind evade 
their recognitions by mental substitutions. We can substi- 
tute a supernatural being for a solid image, but we cannot 
substitute an abstract proposition, for a different abstract 
proposition ; therefore the moderns have endured death in 
every form, rather than render homage to the idols of the 
imagination ; whilst the ancients yielded to the illusions of 
art ; or exercised the resource of converting the idols of the 
hand, into types of whatever supernatural beings they chose. 
Hence tho ancient solid images or idols, were easily admit- 
ted and adopted, without embroiling nations or exciting ma- 
levolenee among individuals; whilst metaphysical image? 
or idols, engender remorseless hatreds, incessant persecu- 
tions, and sprinkle the earth with human blood. 

Ancient atheism, or God as by law established, requir- 
ed only an external or ceremonious worship of a visible 
idol: modern atheism, or God as by law established, re- 
quires an internal or conscientious worship of an invisible 
idol. « Bend your body," said one tyrant ; (i bend your 
mind," says the other. « I will punish you," said one, « if 



GOVERNMENT 09? THE U. STATES, ^50 

you do not perforin certain gestures which you can per- 
form," « I will punish you," says the other, " if you do not 
believe certain dogmas, which you cannot believe." One 
said, « I have with my hands made a God, you shall see 
him, and externally worship him." The other, "I have 
with my fancy made a God, whom you cannot see, or a 
tenet which you cannot believe, which you shall worship in- 
ternally." Modern atheism is incomparably the most ty- 
rannical, and has accordingly provoked incomparably most 
resistance. It requires of man to mould his mind and an- 
nul his convictions. 

It can also manufacture instruments for effecting its ends, 
infinitely more destructive than the ancient. Zeal is whet- 
ted by the imagination into the utmost keenness. Praxi- 
teles would more easily be persuaded, that his statue of 
Venus was not a goddess ; than Origen, that his dogmas of 
the pre-existence of souls, and that Christ was to be again 
crucified to save the devils, were errours. The stuff of 
which physical idols are made, may be analysed and com- 
prehended ; but that which is the basis of metaphysical 
idols, is always beyond human understanding, whilst it is 
still liable to greater agitation by the idea of a ghost, than 
from a real stump. 

The art of governing the deity is cultivated for the sake 
of governing men. If a government or a church should by 
its mandates directly regulate the temporal and spiritual 
dispensations of the Almighty, the burst of derision would be 
universal ; but laws, establishing tenets, tones, gesticula- 
tions and ceremonies, for the purpose of indirectly regulat- 
ing these temporal and spiritual dispensations, are slyly re- 
sorted to, because they gratify man's lust of power, and 
flatter his aversion to a reliance on a life of moral rectitude 
for salvation. Laws, dictating the mode of influencing the 
deity, are declarations, that the deity shall be influenced by- 
law. And the conspiracy between the priest and the prose- 
lyte, is founded in the compact, that the priest will learn 
the proselyte to govern the deity, if the proselyte 



±56 THE GOOD MORAL PRINCIPLES OE THE 

suffer the priest to govern him. Besides, true religion will 
not do the work of tyranny, like an heated and beguiled 
Imagination. Tyranny wants persecutors, not advocates of 
truth and virtue; to gain these, it makes gods and religions. 
Is tyranny able by its laws to bring the King of Heaven 
down to earth, and convert him into its instrument? If ty- 
ranny cannot coerce the true God, into an instrument of its 
vices, then the gods it uses must be false. 

The same governments and hierarchies, which eulogize 
Daniel in their prayers? imitate Nebuchadnezzar in their ac- 
tions ; they set up dogma for his image ; and pains, penal- 
ties or tythes for his furnace. The Spaniard who reads of 
this furnace with horrour, dances at an auto de fe with 
transport. And the governments which erect the modern 
furnace, contrived to consume without fire, believe the dog- 
ma, for the sake of which they harrass and torture man- 
kind, as faithfully as the Babylonian did the divinity of his 
image. 

Although the atheism of images, has been less mischiev- 
ous than tiie atheism of dogma, the additional malignity of 
the latter, is only an exacerbation of the same principle. It 
is as presumptuous in you, to require me to worship the 
manufacture of your head as of your hands ; your imagina- 
ry or solid idol ; and it would be wicked in me to do either. 
But there is less tyranny and impiety in worshipping the 
solid image, because the mind has a refuge in its emblema- 
tical nature. Had Henry, Mary and Elizabeth, set up 
solid images, by a Babylonical proclamation, containing a 
disclosure of the power of mental substitution, many mar- 
tyrs to polemical dogma, would have escaped the flames. 

When a government usurps a power of legislating be^ 
tween God and man, it proves itself to be an atheist* If it 
believed there was any God, it would be conscious of the 
vice and folly of miking one ; if it believed there was any 
revelation, it would see the vice and folly of construing it 
by laws, which are not revelation ; if k is believed that God 
made man, it would acknowledge that man could not make 
God. 



GOVERNMENT OE THE V. STATES. 457 

Religion is God's legislation. He alone dispenses its 
sanctions, and these sanctions are mostly of another world. 
Were the governments of this earth, to legislate for the in- 
habitants of the moon, the absurdity and inefficacy of such 
laws would be less, than laws for taking care of human 
souls, by settling the rights of God, and the religious du- 
ties of man. If man, by his laws, can regulate his duties 
to God, he can increase, diminish or expunge them ; and 
has more power over the deity, than Canute had over the 
ocean. 

This aggravated species of sacrilege is perpetrated by 
governments to gratify ambition or avarice ; but they en- 
deavour to hide their true design, under the pretence that 
it is good policy to make a vulgar, that is, a false religion 
by law. It is but a vulgar kind of veneration for the deity, 
which supposes, that the bulk of mankind can be better go- 
verned by man's frauds, than by his truths. The idea, that 
God made a true religion only for a few learned men, and 
gave them a commission to make false religions for the vul- 
gar, from time to time, supposes that the deity was unable 
to legislate for the great mass of his creatures. By reserv- 
ing truth for the learned, and cheating the ignorant into 
virtue, religion is considered as necessary for the first class, 
and superstition as sufficient for the second, without any 
divine authority for the discrimination. But governments 
do not perceive the high encomium they thus pass upon the 
people, by admitting, that the light of religion is necessary 
to check the propensity of the wise for vice, and that the 
blindness of superstition is unable to corrupt the propensity 
of the vulgar for virtue. And thus discover that they fos- 
ter a delusion incapable of making men better in this 
world, or happier in the next, from their own secret avarice, 
ambition and atheism. 

Governments and hierarchies have annexed a sanctity 
to the utensils of religion, which they will not allow to reli- 
gion itself. To protect these utensils, artfully blended with 
their usurpations, they have invented the term, " sacrilege." 

59 



\4$ THE GOOD MORAL PRINCIPLES OF THE 

They are too holy and sacred to be altered, taken away or 
applied to any temporal purpose. Less delicate with reli* 
gioii, they form and transform it, for wicked temporal 
ends ; and the only good one they pretend to expect from 
the trade of religion-making, is, that the vail of a treache- 
rous or deluded concurrence, drawn by law over a nation* 
will produce good order and morality. Are deceit, purchas- 
ed by office, or imposed by fear, and ignorance produced by 
f rand, good nourishers of moral virtues? Will habitual in- 
sincerity to God. habituate us to sincerity in our commerce 
with men ? 

A new species of political atheism or polytheism is 
making its appearance, and gradually gaining ground 
among mankind, more specious, insidious and dangerous- 
than the old. It is that of making government the patron 
of the whole tribe of tenets or metaphysical idols, existing, 
or capable of being invented. We will suppose only an 
hundred of these in a nation, each pronouncing the rest to 
be damnable errours. You shall adventure your soul, says 
a government, upon a lottery, wherein the chances are an 
hundred to cue against you. Why are men driven by law 
into this injudicious species of gambling ? Because govern- 
ments believe in neither of these metaphysical idols, and 
gain power by patronising all. Had they believed any one 
to be the herald of salvation, they would have exhibited 
some preference for truth, or at least have forborne to 
coerce men by penalty into an election, deterringly for- 
tuitous. 

A polytheism of tenets would probably have appeared 
as ridiculous to the ancients, as their polytheism of wooden 
idols does to us. Without settling the point of plurality, 
between physical and metaphysical polytheism, they might 
have considered it as more likely that all their gods existed, 
than that all our contradictory tenets were true; and 
they might have urged the emblematical nature of their 
system, to shew that it was less polytheistical, than a politi- 
cal patronage of a pantheon of tenets. A government which 



GOVERNMENT OF THE U. STATE*. 150 

assumes this patronage, is less theocratical, and more 
atheistical, than one which assumes the patronage of a poly- 
theism, composed of solid images of various divine attri- 
butes. Its object must therefore be power and not truth, 

This new species of atheism or polytheism (for the pa- 
tron of many contradictory tenets or religions, must either 
believe that there are many gods or no god) under the garb 
of toleration or liberality, conceals a political instrument of 
tenfold malignity to human happiness, beyond the ancient. 
Ancient governments, by the aid of one superstition and one 
priesthood, were able to destroy civil liberty ,• what 
then will not modern governments effect, by the aid of ma- 
ny contrary tenets, and many priesthoods ? By the-ancient 
polytheism, the people were united, by the modern, they are 
divided. Under the ancient, governments destroyed civil 
liberty i by corrupting one priesthood ; under the modern, 
a patronage of many priesthoods will produce the same ef- 
fect. The power of governments, arising from the eor~ 
ruption and influence of many priesthoods, produced by its 
patronage of a polytheism of metaphysical deities, will in- 
finitely surpass any power, arising from a polytheism of 
physical deities ; because of the rivalry among these 
tenets and their priests. This will render each separate 
priesthood more influential over its sect, and more subser- 
vient to the pleasure of the government. Whereas Jupi- 
ter, Mercury, Diana, and the rest of the heathen deities, in 
the shape of images, to the learned were emblems, and to the 
vulgar appeared as friends; exalted by the imagination in- 
to intellectual beings, united in convocation, and arranged in 
subordination, whose little disputes or amorous adventure- 
never destroyed the peace or good humour of mankind. 

The union of the priesthood under ancient superstitions, 
formed a powerful, and occasionally, an useful check upon 
the government ; and although like any other order, it was 
prone to coalesce itself with it, to deceive and oppress the 
people; yet an ancient priesthood constituted a balance 
conformable in principle to Mr. Adams's system, and pro. 
ductive of similar effects. 



&60 THE GOOD MOBAX, PBINCirLE6 OF THJfc 

All the controversies between hierarchies and govern 
ments and their several fluctuations of power, are witnesses 
to the trutli of this observation. A balance of power be- 
tween a government and a hierarchy, produced witli criti- 
cal exactness, the same effects as its balance between other 
orders. The two orders were constantly in a state of war, 
for the purpose of subjecting each other; or united, for the 
purpose of oppressing the people ; and their warfare pro- 
duced occasional ameliorations of the hard and regular ty- 
ranny arising from their union. 

No such amelioration can occur, from a priesthood and a 
nation, cut up into jealous and inveterate religious orders or 
casts, by a multitude of tenets; when patronised and managed 
by agovernment. These divisions would in time constitute so 
many casts of China or Indostan, over which, western, like 
eastern governments, would preside with absolute power ; 
because they will be made to deprive a nation of its unify or 
self, and destroy the idea of a common or publick good, as 
effectually, as its division into civil orders or casts. Such a 
divided priesthood, instead of a cheek upon tyranny, would 
become its instrument. And under pretence of impartiali- 
ty between God and Baal, the government would draw inex- 
haustible recruits from both. 

The oppression resulting from a mass of legal pecuniary 
religious rights, orders or privileges, will ultimately become 
the same, as that which would result from a mass of legal 
pecuniary civil rights, orders or privileges. Mercenary ar- 
mies, and most corporate bodies, belong to the latter species 
of moral beings ; and a patronage of government over the 
whole priesthood of a nation, composing one church, or ma- 
ny churches, to the former; but both are of the same moral 
nature, and will operate the same moral effeets. 

The denunciation of exclusive privileges, titles, and an 
interposition with religion, by the policy of the United 
States, was suggested by the consideration, that such rights 
or powers, commence or terminate in despotism. One of 
ike reprobated powers is exercised by charters, and another 



30YERISMENT OF THE U. STATES 46i 

is advocated by the doctrine, that government ought to pa- 
tronise all metaphysical idols. But neither the perpetrated 
nor intended violation is chargeable to our constitutional po- 
licy ; that labours to leave wealth to be distributed by in- 
dustry, and salvation by God ; and abstains throughout 
from the idea of a power in government to regulate either 
hy law. By leaving to every one a fair chance to work out 
his temporal and eternal welfare, it excites merits called 
forth by no motive, when governments assume the dispensa- 
tion of both. 

The constitutions of the United States, have renounced 
the practice of creating by law, moral duties, temporal or 
eternal, in the shape of exclusive privileges or religious te- 
nets, because they deemed it equally oppressive to enrich 
the priesthood of fraud as the priesthood of superstition. 
Had they been formed by atheism, they would have seen 
no objection to one species of manufacture ; nor to the 
other, had they been formed by paper systems, patronage 
or orders. 

From an opinion, that there is really a God, our policy 
has inferred, that he has established some mode of inculcat- 
ing virtue, preferable to human frauds ; that there is no 
occasion to kill or persecute one another on the score of re- 
ligion, because God needs no champion to assert his honour 
or to avenge his quarrels ; that at this time of day, martyr- 
dom would be lunacy, and saintship, under the banner of a 
dogma, intolerance ; and that it is a profanation of religion, 
to make it an instrument, to gratify avarice or ambition. 

Governments have almost universally inculcated opinions 
contrary to these, and irreiigion and insincerity have been 
the fruits of their policy. If we see governments making 
gods of wood or of dogma, or settling revelation by law; if 
the people see them coining religion into power and money, 
under pretence of coining it into good morals ; it will teach 
them also atheism and deceit. As a cunning government 
uses religion to cheat a nation, a cunning man will use it to 
cheat his neighbour ; and in place of its being a bond of love, 



462 THE GOOD MOKAE PRINCIPLES OF TBffi 

a preceptor of virtue, and the refuge of hope, religion 
would be thus made an engine of publick oppression and 
private fraud. 

Atheism forbids men to look into the book of nature for 
God, and asserts its fluctuating fables to be better evidence 
of his existence, than his own permanent creation. And it 
forces men to see God, not in the sun's light, but in some 
dark t?i\et 9 adapted to a temporary market. 

It is to this, hour unknown, whether established or legal 
religions have ever carried a single soul into heaven ; but 
thejre is no doubt of their having carried millions out of this 
world. Yet Uis under pretence of making men extremely 
happy, after they are dead, that these religions make them 
extremely mis; rable, whilst they are alive ; and the com- 
pensation for the promised happiness, is always estimated 
upon the supposition of its being as certain, as the suffered 
misery- Can honesty or virtue have contrived a lottery, 
from which men draw oppression in this world, and blanks 
in the next ; or can impiety exceed the presumption of sell- 
ing or bestow ing heaven ? The polytheism of tenets, or a 
political patronage of the whole tribe of fanatical follies, en- 
tangles men more inextricably in this lottery, than the estab- 
lishment of a single religion ; one may be true; many, con- 
trary to each other, must all be false except one. To be 
oppressed by the whole tribe, to pay the whole tribe, and 
to strengthen a government against a nation, by recruiting 
its power with the patronage of the whole tribe, merely to 
take the chance of being jostled into that, which really bes- 
tows what they all promise, is the speculation proposed by a 
polytheism of tenets. 

Warburton is the only bishop who has disclosed a rcli* 
gious candour, equal to Mr. Adams's political honesty. In 
the first volume of his Divine Legation, lie defines an estab- 
lished religion to be " a league between a civil and reli- 
** gious society for mutual defence and support ; to secure 
" the obedience of the people to the government, in which 
'•' Uis so efficacious as to gain reverence and respects foj* 



GOVERNMENT OF THE V. STATES. 463 

'* tyrants ; for giving to a cburch a coactive power to pu- 
« nish intentions by spiritual courts, and thus supply a de- 
« feet in civil society, wLich can only punish acts ; as an 
« engine bound to render its utmost services to the govern- 
" ment for its wages ; as a means to prevent the rivalry of 
" sects, by admitting one only to a share of power and emol- 
i( uments ; as a compact founded in reason and nature, equal* 
« ly with the original compact between the government and 
u the people ; as one to be made between the government 
« and the largest religious sect in society ; as entitled to a 
** test law for its security against the tolerated sects, now 
" inflamed by the advantages of the established sect ; as 
«• giving no cause of umbrage to other sects by its cxclu- 
<* sive privileges and emoluments, because rewards are not 
w sanctions of civil law, wherefore a member of society has 
« aright only to protection, and magistrates an arbitrary 
« power to dispose of all places of honour or profit ; as pre- 
« venting the persecutions, rebellions, revolutions and loss 
« of liberty, caused by the intestine struggles of religious 
" sects." And he concludes, " in a word, an established 
« religion, with a test law, is the universal voice of nature," 
Nature, according to the bishop, dictates an establish- 
ment of one religious sect; according to Mr. Adams, of 
three civil sects ; and according to both, for the purpose of 
preventing persecutions, rebellions, revolutions and loss of 
liberty. She dictates, according to one author, that no re- 
gard is to be paid to truth in the selection of the establish- 
ed religion ; according to the other, that no regard is to be 
paid to talents, in selecting kings or nobles ; preferring the 
size of the sect to the one, and lineage to the other. War- 
burton- utters the religious policy of the system of orders, 
and that system adheres to the religious policy of Warbur- 
ton. A complete parallel would disclose an indissoluble 
affinity, but as the reader knows, that though God has 
tnade a diversity of opinion a quality of human nature, the 
bishop says, that nature dictates the establishment of one 
religion, or a repeal by man of this diversity ; and that 



4-6-to THE GOOD MORA! PRINCIPLES OF THE 

though nature appears to take very great care, not to signa* 
lize particular families with royal or noble marks, Mr, 
Adams says she dictates an establishment of orders ; he 
will need no assistance in discovering the indissoluble union 
between a political system, comprising orders, and a reli- 
gious system, comprising an established sect ; nor in esti- 
mating the value of the policy of the United States, from 
its not requiring any association with political atheism. 

The world is indebted to Mr Jefferson for an argument, 
condensed into a law, and recorded for the use of posterity 
in the statute book of Virginia, which political atheism has 
never yet adventured to face. Like the serpent, uncovered 
in its lurking place, it indeed hisses at the hand which re- 
moved the concealment. But the long acquiescence in the 
principles of this law, may be fairly considered as having 
ripened them into maxims, asserted by our policy, and es- 
tablished by experience. 

The religious policy of orders considers man as a 
perishing physical being ; and treats him with errours and 
idols, as a savage is amused with beads and trinkets ; that 
of the United States, considers him as a moral being ; and 
inspired with a hope that his attainments are not concluded 
in this world, encourages him to look towards truth and 
God. The old theory believing there is no God, usurps the 
regulation of the intercourse between its phantoms, soul and 
deity, by laws operating upon body ; because it discerns no 
danger in using religion to bribe, deceive and oppress; the 
new, believing that there is a God, shrinks from the impiety 
of thrusting laws between God and spirit, which neither 
can be made to obey ; because it expects retribution in ano 
ther world, for its doings in this. Such laws, by the old sys- 
tem, are called pious, by the new, impious frauds. The old 
system pretends to govern God and spirit ; the new humbly 
subordinates itself to God ; the old, because it believes in 
neither ; the new r , because it believes in both. In short, 
the deity of the old political theories is admitted by them- 
selves to be " a pious idol ';" whereas the deity of the poli- 
cy of the United States is the eternal God. 



GOVERNMENT OF THE U. STATE go My 

And yet tbis old atheist, the universal advocate of an 
opinion that a pious fraud is a deputy for God, capable of 
managing men better than God himself, exclaims, that a 
new atheist has risen up in the new political theory ; just 
as exclusive privileges accuse equal rights of an enmity to 
private property. The priests of the idol and the privilege 
are equally clamorous to transfer their own guilt to inno- 
cent avengers, for the same reason ,• atheists and invaders 
of private property themselves, they endeavour to repel 
truth by odium. Savages deify the author of evil ; but 
they do notdemonize the author of good. If neither of the 
eombatants should be furnished with an army of mercenary 
troops, we may certainly foresee on which side victory will 
fall ; but if we seduce from their principles, the honest pro- 
selytes of our policy, by offering them bribes to enlist under 
the banner of the old atheist, one other demonstration will 
be added to the fate of Socrates, of the insecurity of virtue 
and innocence exposed to fraud or folly. 

A belief in a deity and in the existence of the soul, is 
consistent with the religious policy of the United States ; 
and a disbelief in both, with the religious policy of almost 
all other governments. The reader will recollect, that we 
arranged governments into two classes ; as being universal- 
ly founded in, or drawn from good or evil moral principles* 
Theocracy must be the creed of one class, and atheism of 
the second. The advocates of good moral principles, such 
as truth, freedom of religion, knowledge, limitation of pow- 
er and equal right?, cannot be atheists ; and the advocates 
of evil moral principles, such as fraud, force, ignorance, 
despotism and exclusive privileges, cannot be believers. By 
their fruits ye shall know them. 

The infidelity, in which the old political theories are all 
founded, is visible both in their formation and practice. 
They commence with forming religion, in a mould construct- 
ed by politicians. And they practice fraud and force, be- 
cause politicians never believe religions constructed by 
themselves. Freed from responsibility by atheism, op- 
fin 



&Q6 THE GOOD M014AL PKINCIFIES O* TUJS 

pression and blood are ordinary iteui9 of their operations; 
and they use religion as a cold tyrant to inflict the one, or 
a fanatical butcher to shed the other. 

Not less visible is the faith of the political theory of the 
United States. It was that faith which placed religion 
arbove the reach of the politician, that it might not by his 
arts be transformed from a consolation into a scourge. By 
the same faith, was our theory guided to associate itself 
with a catalogue of moral principles, precisely contrary to 
those used as accomplices by the old theories. It woulcl 
be doubly inconsistent to allow faith to political theories,, 
which make religion a pander for avarice, ambition and ty- 
ranny ; and to deny it to one, which rescues it from this 
shameful servility. False religion, like false honour, is ea- 
sily detected by discovering its sourer in prejudice, passion: 
or fraud, and not in moral rectitude. Both, goaded on by 
an ignorant iufatuation, or a wicked pride, expect heaves 
and fame for inflicting evils on mankind or on themselves* 
Both profess, boast, destroy and dissemble. The fanatick 
and the duellist are the same characters ; devotees of vice 
or errour, and contemners of morality and truth $ who per- 
vert honour and religion into caballistical terms, to bewitch* 
deceive, and torment themselves and others. How wonder- 
fully astonished must these characters be, after a life of mu- 
tual contempt and execration, to discover their exact iden- 
tity ? 

Mr. Adams has omitted to contrast the American and 
English systems, in relation to religion ; and to acknow- 
ledge, that the freedom it enjoyed under the one, was in- 
compatible with the principles of the other. The English, 
is one of those old theories, which makes gods or religions 
by law ; and it is essential to this, as well as to all govern- 
ments composed of orders, to coerce the mind into one opi- 
nion, religious and political ; these orders being equivalent 
to a set of anatomists, for carving the faces of all mankind 
into one shape ; except that the instruments which cut the 
num\ inflict more pain than those which cut the flesh ; and 



GOVERNMENT OF THE U. STATES. 46? 

that it is easier to mould matter than spirit. The necessity 
of a system of orders for the mind-carving policy, is as de- 
monstrable from their nature as from experience. Such 
systems can only operate according to the minds of their 
component orders. The operation of these three artificial 
minds, must control the minds of individuals, or these or- 
ders would cease to govern, and the system terminate. It* 
essence consists in substituting three artificial minds or in- 
terests, for a natural mind or interest. If a government is 
founded in the first, it destroys the latter ; if in the latter? 
it destroys the first. The natural mind and interest must 
of course be carved into a shape, suitable to the artificial 
mind and interest. The necessity of this substitution to 
the system of orders, for the sake of existence, is the true 
parent of its. double-faced idols, called church and state, 
And hence religion in England is contrived for the temporal 
salvation of three artificial minds, neither of them existing 
after death, instead of the eternal salvation of the souls of 
men. 

Orders seldom admit: that their powers are deduced 
from the people ? they deduce them from inheritance, un- 
written compact, or time immemorial. The rights of man 
being thus lost in the rights of orders, it is obvious that an 
individual cannot retain any species of right, not even 
the right of conscience, because it is the principle of or* 
ders, that nature gives man no rights at all $ and that all 
his rights are conventional or legal. Such being the case, 
if it is the will of a government of orders, that the con 
science of an individual should be cut into any shape what- 
soever, it would be preposterous for him to assert that it 
ought not to be done, and that he ought not to be punished 
for having a conscience which he was obliged to take from 
an almighty power. He would be silenced by learning* 
that under the theory of orders, there are no natural rightu 

Religious freedom, or the right of keeping our conscien- 
ces, is compatible with the policy of the United States, be 
cause the natural mind or will of man is rot controlled fry 



468 THE GOOD MOKAX PRINCIPLES OF THE 

the artificial mind or will of orders $ and because it admit* 
man to have derived rights from nature, as well as from 
law. Having rights, men, when forming governments, may 
relinquish or retain such as they please ; and by so forming 
a government that the natural mind of man, shall not be 
controlled by the artificial mind of orders, this natural mind 
will be able to preserve the natural rights connected with it ; 
Whereas if this natural mind is controlled by the artificial 
mind or will of orders, no natural right whatsoever can 
remain, because there cannot exist together, a natural and 
an artificial sovereign. 

It is important to discover the reason, why the system 
of orders, in every form, has invariably moulded religion 
into an engine for its own purposes, lest it should be imagin- 
ed that this feature of that policy, might be obliterated by 
Mr. Adams's new idea of the responsibility of orders, as 
hereditary representatives. 

A nation is no more a nation, after it has lost its unity, 
than a man would be a man, cut up into pieces. Divided 
into orders and interests, it is turned into several nations, 
separated, not by geographical boundaries, but by legal 
lines drawn between different privileges, or between privi- 
lege and degradation. The nations residing on each side of 
these legal bouadaries, will hate each other far beyond any 
degree of animosity, which can exist between nations geo- 
graphically divided ; because the legal boundaries must 
benefit and injure ; whereas the geographical may do nei 
ther. The former create in some proportion the relation 
between master and slave, and excite correspondent pas- 
sions ; the latter are perfectly consistent with the relation 
between equal friends. Accordingly, nations or individuals 
living on different sides of geographical lines, may some 
times love each other ; whilst orders on different sides of 
legal lines, always hate each other. 

How then can Mr. Adams's idea of the responsibility of 
orders, save for a nation the freedom of conscience ? There 
£5 no moral being, after it is divided into several moral 



GOVERNMENT OE THE V. STATES. 469 

beings of distinct interests, to enforce this responsibility. 
The natural mind, acting by election, is superseded by a legal 
mind, guided by the interest of orders. 

Suppose he intends that the rights and privileges of 
these orders shall be settled by a constitution. This is no 
more than a treaty between these artificial and legal na- 
tions. And if such nations hate each other more sincerely 
and constantly than natural nations, treaties between them 
will be more frequently violated. In fact, orders never 
make such treaties, without instantly commencing their vio- 
lation ; and it is owing to the impossibility of forming a trea- 
ty which they will observe, that Mr. Adams throughout his 
erudite researches into their history, has found them con- 
stantly at war. It is not unnatural that he should be in- 
flamed by the ill success of all others, to evince his diplo- 
matick skill in forming a new treaty ; but a nation is under 
no sucli emulative impulse to become the subject of the ex- 
periment. 

If orders cannot be kept from hostilities, secret or open, 
by didatiek stipulations, can it be expected that they will 
forbear to use the most powerful political weapons ? They 
are political beings themselves, and no political being, hav- 
ing a power to use religion as an instrument, has ever fail- 
ed to exert it. The only security consists in withholding 
this power from political beings ; but this cannot be resort 
cd io in the case of orders, because they are sovereign them- 
selves, and disclaim the idea of allegiance to any superior. 

There being several nations intermingled together, under 
a treaty ibr securing to, and excluding privileges from each, 
the defence and enlargement of these privileges will be their 
iirst interest; every means will be resorted to for these 
ends ; and the more absurd and oppressive the privileges 
are, the more violent and wicked will these means become. 
A noble nation and a plebeian nation, or a banking nation 
and an unprivileged nation, will necessarily terminate in 
an oppressing and an oppressed nation. These legal nations 
hate each other as mortally as white and black nations 



470 THE GOOD MORAX PRINCIPLES 0* TH£ 

mingled together. One of them will constantly endea^ 
vour to plunder another. Robbery is the invariable de* 
sign of a confederacy of legal privileges, and the retaliation 
it finally provokes is still more heinous* The wars between 
the whites and blacks of St, Domingo, being transitory, 
were inconsiderable in point of mischief or horrour, compar- 
ed with those between legal nations, called orders, detailed by 
Mr. Adams. To make inimical interests friendly t© each 
other, by the theory of balances, is more difficult than to 
establish harmony between different colours, because men 
will contend more malignantly for substance than for 
shadow. 

Under the policy of the United States, the moral indivi- 
duality of the nation being preserved by the elective mode of 
giving effect to its will, by an unity of rights, by its sove- 
reignty over the government, and by the militia system, 
such a moral being may retain for the members which con 
stitute itself, the liberty of conscience ; but this become? 
impossible after separate interests are substituted for unit- 
ad 5 after the government becomes the sovereign of the 
people ; or after a mercenary army becomes the sovereign 
of the militia, 

Freedom of religious opinion, is another link of the 
ohain of rights, necessary to preserve election. If a go- 
vernment is invested with a power to inflict on the mind re- 
ligious coercion, it will add political. And if it can mould 
opinion by force to suit its interests or designs in one case, 
it will do it in the other. The freedom of opinion is an in- 
divisible right. If a government can split it at all, it may 
by frequent divisions destroy its strength. And as this free- 
dom is the essence of election, whenever it is impaired in 
the case of religion, election itself receives a wound ; which 
again illustrates its dependence for efficacy, on the preser- 
vation of other rights. Good and evil principles attract or 
gravitate towards each other, and are as incapable of ex- 
changing places as matter and spirit. Political orders 
aro therefore naturally unable to associate with rel> 



GOVERNMENT OF THE V. STATE8. *7£ 

gious liberty, because this instills brotherly love ; those, 
brotherly hatred. Indians imagine that a Deity and a devil 
unite in the government of the universe. And a union be- 
tween the good principle of religious liberty, and the evil 
principle of sovereign orders, in the government of a nation, 
would exemplify this savage philosophy. 

Upon none of this important ground has Mr. Adams ven- 
tured to tread. As to the freedom of conscience, the dear- 
est right of human nature, he is silent. Silence was less 
injurious to his theory s than a confession, that religious li- 
berty could only exist with the principle of national self 
government $ because a sovereignty of orders annihilates a 
real national mind, and substitutes for it three artificial 
minds. 

Before this subject is concluded, it is suggested to the 
reader, that rights retained by nations, as unnecessary for 
governments, constitute our most useful division of power. 
The rights of conscience and of the press, deprive go vera- 
ments of much power, to be otherwise drawn from supersti- 
tion and ignorance. Besides these, the people of America 
have endeavoured to keep in their hands a great extent of 
political ground, forbidden to government. All this terri- 
tory is lost at onee by introducing the sovereignty of orders. 
It will also be lost by laws gradually encroaching upon it ; 
snch as laws for cutting off the provinces of free inquiry 
and militia defence ; by regulating the press, and by stand- 
ing armies. The first mode of getting rid of the whole cat- 
alogue of human rights, is not less certain than the se- 
cond ; it drives men gradually towards slavery, by law, 
as the Indians are driven towards the ocean, by encroach- 
ment. 

From among the rights retained by our policy, we have 
selected those of self defence or bearing arms, of con- 
science, and of free inquiry, for two purposes ,• one, to 
shew the vast superiority of our policy, in being able to 
keep natural rights necessary for liberty and happiness, 
out of the hands of governments ; tho other, to shew that 



472 THE GOOD MORAL PRINCIPLES OF THU 

this ability is the effect of its principles, ajid beyond the 
reach of Mr. Adams's system, or of any other, unable to re 
serve to the people, and to .withhold i from governments, a 
variety of rights. Of the three selected as illustrations* 
the right of free inquiry remains to be considered. 

Caligula's appointment of hh horse to the consulship* 
is both an illustration and a mockery of the idea of national 
sovereignty, without the freedom of utterance ; and a na- 
tion , the members of which can only speak, and write as 
government pleases, is exactly this consular sovereign. 

But although the rights of the horse and the nation may 
be equal, their happiness will be unequal. The thoughts 
of the horse being under no legal control, he retains this na- 
tural source of pleasure. Man's thoughts, suffered to flow, 
furnish the purest streams of human happiness. Dam'd 
up by law, they stagnate, putrify and poison. To his cha- 
racteristic];, qualities of speaking and writing, all man's so- 
cial discoveries and improvements are owing. Qualities 
which distinguish him from the brute creation, must be na- 
tural rights ; and those which are the parents of social or- 
der, must be useful and beneficial. Why should govern- 
ments declare war against them. 

Expression is the respiration of mind. Deprived 
of respiration, the mind sickens, languishes and dies, like 
the body. It flourished in the climates of Greece and Italy? 
whilst it could breathe freely ; it has decayed in the same 
climates, according to the degrees of suppression it has suf- 
fered. Wherever it can breathe freely* mind seems to be- 
gin to live; swells, as if by enchantment, to a sublime 
magnitude ; and suddenly acquires wonderful powers. 

The objection against a free respiration of mind, is, that 
it may occasionally emit from its lungs (according to our 
metaphorical license) noxious vapours. The same reason 
is infinitely stronger for smothering body ; its lungs con- 
stantly emit noxious vapours. If we deprive mind of 
health or life, because its breath is sometimes noxious, let 
us adhere to the principle and finish the work, by smothering 



tH>V£RNMENT OF" THE V. 8TATM, $78 

body also. Had they so existed, as to be capable of sepa* 
rate destruction, which species of murder would have been 
entitled to the first degree of guilt ? Estimate mind with- 
out body, and body without mind. Behold an ideot ! Let 
aot those pretend to religion, who would poison or murder 
mind, but not poison or murder the body of an ideot. Do 
they perpetrate the first crime, to prove that they will ab- 
stain from the second ? 

The long stationary state of political science* previous 
10 the American revolution, must have been owing to some 
peculiar cause, which enabled other sciences to outstrip it. 
And there is no cause so peculiar to political science, as a 
iegal prohibition of discussion. Mind, as to this science, 
was fettered ; as to others, free. The commencement of 
&e American revolution, knocked off these fetters, politi- 
cal science bounded forward, and a government was formed, 
which is at this moment the solitary political object of uni- 
versal commendation. Few prefer even the government 
under which they live, to ours ; none, any other. 

The opinions in several state constitutions, in favour of 
mental emancipation, being so construed as to expose mind 
to legislative fetters, the good sense of mankind had in this, 
as in many other instances, preceded precept in exploding 
errour. Political prosecutions for opinion had become as 
obsolete as those for witchcraft, before the general consti- 
tution obeyed publiek opinion, by declaring their inconsis- 
tency with free government ; and before the sedition law 
endeavoured to drive political science into a retrocession of 
centuries, for the sake of reviving them. 

The third section of the third article of the general con 
stitution, had been deeply rooted in the natural light of 
free utterance, before the publiek solicitude required its 
farther security, by the third amendment. The utterance 
of any opinions could not constitute treason. Irreverence 
expressed for our constitution and government ; falsehood 
or reasoning to bring into contempt and overturn them; 
*ere not thought politically criminal Instead of being 



..4tf4» THE G00l> MORAL PRINCIPLES OF THE 

condemned to punishment, they are shielded Against prose* 
oution. What could the constitution do more, for the vin- 
dication of an unlimited freedom of utterance, than expose 

..itself to this license? Could it have intended to defend one 
officer of the government by criminal prosecutions, against 
t-fae /freedom of opinion, after having subjected the whole 
government to its inspection ? We should,, under an igno- 
rance of its source, have attributed the constitution to 

, beings more inconsistent and romantick, than those whose 
errours were limited by human folly, had it exposed its own 
iife to preserve an indispensible principle, and relinquished 
the same principle, to preserve the reputation of an indivi- 
dual. If such is the text of the constitution, three volumes 
written by a president, for the purpose of destroying our 
policy by hereditary orders, and laws for prosecuting sar- 
casms against the same president, may both be justified by 
its construction. 

The criminality of bringing a president into contempt, 
consists of its indirect tendency to destroy the government ; 
a direct attempt to destroy the same government cannot be 

, less criminal. If an indirect attempt by writing or. speak- 
ing was punishable, a direct attempt of the same kind 
would not have been shielded against punishment. He wh© 
reads Mr. Adams's sarcasms upon election, and eulogies 
upon hereditary orders, will confess, that they are as well 
calculated to bring a government, founded in one principle 
and reprobating the other, into contempt, as those uttered 
against one of its temporary officers. 

Reverence for a magistrate, is frequently contempt for 
a constitution. The contempt of the English nation for 
James II. arose from a reverence for their form of govern- 
ment. A contempt for principles, and a reverence for men, 
conducted the French nation to the issue of that revolution. 
It is the policy of all despotick governments, enforced by 
sedition laws. In Turkey this policy is perfect. In Eng- 
land, where this policy is less pure than in Turkey, to assert 
$hat the lung, by corrupting two branches of the legislature, 



GOVERNMENT 0* THE IT* STATES . 476 

was destroying the principles of the government, would be 
morally true and legally false 5 and to assert that each or- 
der maintained a constitutional independence of the others, 
would be morally false and legally true. Legal truth, by 
the sedition law policy, is moral falsehood $ the alternative 
lies between betraying the principles of a good government, 
or submitting to be considered as libellous, seditious and 
traitorous. It proposes to us to wound our consciences, by 
becoming traitors te our constitutions ; or to be rewarded 
with bodily punishment for constitutional loyalty. Truth 
and falsehood under such laws, unexceptionably mean praise 
and censure of men in power. 

These murderers of discussion, knowledge and patriot 
ism, engrave upon their tomb, " that private citizens have 
neither the right nor capacity to canvass the measures of 
government." Men are advised to institute governments 
to secure their rights, not to destroy them $ for this purpose, 
they are allowed to possess all the rights and talents of hu- 
man nature ; and the ministry who preach this doctrine, no 
sooner climb by it into power, but they very gravely tell 
the same men, that they have neither talents nor rights $ 
that they cannot distinguish between pleasure and pain; 
and therefore that there is no occasion for them to write or 
speak either truth or falsehood, upon a subject which em- 
braces all their rights, and regulates most of their plea- 
sures. 

Such is the language of orders and privilege in every 
form. Into such politicians, orders and privileges trans- 
form patriots. They assail truth and knowledge, because 
truth and knowledge assail them. They stigmatize dis- 
cussion, because it leads to discovery. They foster igno- 
rance, because it is blind. 

Every attempt by a government to control free discus- 
sion, indicates fear and jealousy. Jealousy hj a govern- 
ment of a nation, is always criminal, because a nation 
cannot usurp its own rights ; but jealousy by a nation 
of a government, is always laudable, because a .govern- 
ment may usurp the rights of the nation. 



bi$ THE GOOD MORA! PRINCIPLES OF THE 

Critfcks, to good writers, are friends ; to bad, foes, Bad 
Writers call them malicious demons ; good, court their ex- 
amination, because they consider the praise of ignorance 
as ridicule. Good and bad governments, regard free die* 
eussion, as good and bad writers do cri ticks ; being the only 
impartial judge of governments which can exist, one kind 
preserves, the other destroys it, for the same quality. 

Some governments which do not avow despotism, are 
not so hardy as to deny the right of free discussion ; they 
only defeat it Tbey allow or punish criticisms upon them- 
selves hy their own will and pleasure. A criminal who 
makes the law, selects the jury, settles tlie evidence, and 
pronounces the judgement, may safely come to trial. A 
subordinate member of a government, cannot be made an 
impartial judge of his superior's merits. A king of 
England boasted, that he could have what law or gospel he 
pleased, because he could appoint, promote and translate 
judges and bishops. Would these judges and bishops im- 
partially try such kings? 

A judge of the United States, possessed of an embas- 
sage, or capable of receiving one, would be an English 
bishop holding in commendam, or expecting translation^ 
An instance of such a bishop, uninfluenced by the govern- 
ment, is regarded with admiration. Sedition laws subject 
publick discussion to this species of holiness ; are its dee* 
8sons infallible, because they may be always foretold ? 

It is obvious that nations are the only juries qualified 
to try governments. Can they decide justly without discus- 
sion, and without facts, except those admitted by the culprit? 
"Will the ambition and avarice of factions be recited in their 
5wn laws ? or will these factions enact tlieir frauds into 
justice, as they do idols into gods ? When laws pretend to 
make gods or truth, we may certainly expect idols and false- 
hood. Factions will never make truth by law, for the 
sake of detecting or punishing themselves. The instant a 
government is guided by avarice or ambition, it degenerates 
fits a faction? which makes >aws to punish ihc opinions of 



«0/VEItffM£NT OF THE T7. STATE?- tfY 

others, and to hide its own crimes- Tiee its even less likely 
than errour. to subject itself to punishment, 

The chains which bind nations to the block of slavery, 
have been forged of such strength, that it is a prodigy to 
hreak them, without calamities almost as terrible. Be- 
tween these chains and such calamities will continue to lie 
the election of mankind, unless a force sufficing to break the 
former is discovered, capable of effect without begetting tim 
evil of civil war. No such force Jias occurred to the min$ 
of man, except the freedom of discussion. If power shall 
seize on the press also, what will men gain by the art 
of printing? This noble art itself, will rivet and net 
break the bonds of despotism. Under t\\Q direction of a go- 
vernment, it will operate upon civil liberty, as oracles dirl 
upon religion*. The press will lie like the oracle, when n 
government directs its responses ; and the success of false 
hood, protected against investigation, is illustrated by the in 
fluence of oracles for centuries. 

The preservation and use of language, are the benefits 
gained by mankind from the art of printing. Refined ami 
fixed, religion and science need no longer be stored under 
locks, liable to rust, and keys perpetually changing thpv 
shape, Hieroglyphick, shanscrit and corrupted latin, the 
only previous depositaries of both, have been superseded by 
printing ; and rivers of truth and reason began instantly to 
clear away the dust and cobwebs in which they were in- 
volved. Religion, as most important, preceded the science 
in extracting truth and reformation from the art of print- 
ing ; and when we see her no longer like a blood stainer 
fury, we almost lament that this soul and body saving discc 
very, had not been revealed with the gospel. Why should 
the science of government be retained in the bondage, 
which for ages could demonize religion, and obstruct know- 
ledge ? and are not the fetters of sedition laws, as strong i>.s 
those of latin, shanscrit or hieroglyphick. 

An argument used against free discussion by goverr 
mentsv was ilrft used by the Pope of Rome^ It wouW 



£78 THE GOOD M0RA1 PRINCIPLES OF THfe 

excite sedition and civil war. A world of experiments v 
have ascertained, that the propensity of mankind is infinite^ 
ly stronger to bear bad governments than to subvert good. 
This propensity for political obedience, is strengthened bjr 
free discussion, on behalf of good governments, by the in- 
fluence of the merit it discloses ; and weakened under bad/ 
by disclosing their vices. On behalf of which will its sup- 
pression operate? 

Suppose, both that the people are inclined to turbulence, 
and governments to tyranny. Yet, for one evil inflicted by • 
turbulence upon governments, one thousand have been in* 
flieted by tyranny upon nations. To suppress free discus- 
sion from an apprehension of an evil, rare and temporary $ 
for the sake of fostering one, frequent and durable ; would 
be obviously unwise. But when we find religion cured of 
its fury by free discussion, may we not confidently consider 
it as a cure also for political rage 5 and the true panacea 
both for the tyranny of governments and the turbulence of 
the people ; and that to surrender its benefits for fear of ite 
evils, would be like surrendering the benefits of the sun, be- 
cause of its noxious exhalations? 

Such a surrender would be a substitution of the correla- 
tive vice for the opposite virtue. Resistance and submis- 
sion to tyranny are relatively contraries. Resistance is a 
generous and active principle, inspired hy a love of man- 
kind, which makes all the efforts designed to advance the 
the publiek good 5 it is the sole defender of human liberty, 
and reasoning is its best and safest weapon. Ought the 
patriot, resistance, to be disarmed, and metamorphosed into 
the slave, submission ? This patriot never draws a sword, 
unless he is robbed by law of free discussion. Compare 
the erect, open and manly countenance of one princi- 
ple, with the downcast, gloomy and fearful visage of 
the other ; and use the limner, free discussion or sedi- 
tion law, to paint your own face, according to your 
own ideas of beauty. 



INTERNMENT OF THE U. STATES. 479 

Free discussion will instruct the publick mind, in what 
is just of excellent in government, as it refines the taste and 
judgement of mankind in relation to other sciences. And 
publick officers will be compelled to conform their charac- 
ters, as authors do books, to this refinement. The license 
of the press, like the license of the stage, will be corrected ; 
and even the frauds and tyranny of newspapers, will at 
length be resisted by this correct, trusty and inexorable 
tribunitial power 5 which will learn to pronounce its veto 
against deviations from the principles of free government, 
with the same skill it discloses in detecting deviations from 
the principles of other sciences. Without it, the best prin- 
ciples may slide into the worst ; the liberty of the press it- 
self might be perverted ; and printers might become ty- 
rants under the cap of liberty. This might be effected by 
extracting from the liberty of the press, the right of pro- 
ducing condemnation, by withholding the means of defence, 
or of killing unheard. But this species of tyranny too enor- 
mous for governments to claim, would be soon detected by 
free discussion, as a fraud upon principle, to which it would 
at length bring back culprits, by opening to defence the 
channel of aceusation. 

God has not by sedition laws, prohibited to man the free 
examination of his works ; but man " cloathed in a brief 
authority," arrogantly extorts a species of reverence, which 
the deity disclaims. « Consider my works ; I have given 
you reason and left it free/' Such is the law of the creator. 
" Reverence my qualities ; presume not to consider my 
works ; use your reason according to my will." Such is 
the law of a creature. It is a law which idols in every 
shape enact, because free inquiry would never mistake 
them for gods. Governments resort to sedition laws, for 
the same reasons which induce many dealers in newspapers 
to obstruct free inquiry ; to hide their frauds, and make 
themselves idols. 

When a fraud commences its operations, it is annoyed by 
truth and knowledge. To meet these enemies in the open 



*80 THE GOGD MORAL PIUNCIPXES Oi TUi* 

Held of fair discussion, would be its ruin. It thereiuirt? 
avoids this species of combat, by calling it sedition. Thii 
misnomer parries detection, by persuading mankind that 
the ouly mode of making it, is a greater evil than the fraud 
itself. And by ingeniously drawing the alternative between 
the fury of sedition and the good temper of knavery, the lat- 
ter is placed in the most favourable light. Whereas, had 
fraud confessed, that knowledge could never abound with- 
out free inquiry, and that ignorance invited imposition and ty- 
ranny with inevitable success ; it would have been obvious, 
supposing that free inquiry tended to beget both knowledge 
and sedition, that a good and an evil were preferable to two 
evils, ignorance and tyranny, the fruits of its suppression* 
Fraud strives to hide the long chain of moral effects attach- 
ed to each of the principles ; knowledge and ignorance ; be- 
cause it would find sedition an appendage of the latter. 
Daring above thirty years, since their independence, less 
mischief has been done in the United States by sedition; 
than frequently in Turkey, during the same period, in 
one day. 

Free inquiry, national interest, and national power* 
united, can seldom produce sedition, because it can have no 
object. Power, united with these associates, never thinks 
of entrenching itself behind sedition laws, whilst united 
with orders or exclusive privileges, it flees to them for re- 
fuge. Therefore the policy of the United States both per- 
mits and requires free inquiry, by which knowledge is ad- 
vanced* whilst the system of orders permits and requires 
sedition laws, by which knowledge is suppressed. 

If free inquiry or discussion may be abused, so may reli- 
gion and the power of speech. Ought religion and speaking 
to be suppressed, because an abuse of one, produces idolatry, 
and of the other, lying ? Every good has an alloy of evil. It 
is the case with life itself. Shall we destroy social freedom, 
for the sake of destroying its alloy, calumny ? We can des- 
troy this and all other temporal evils by death $ and we can 
increase them by an enslaved "press. What is tl\e wisdoin 



GOVERNMENT OF THE V. STATES. 481 

of that policy, which brings upon men an host of foes, ins 
order to destroy one ? 

The only ahuse pretended to be checked by sedition laws ? 
is the promulgation of falsehood. Their efficacy for at- 
taining this solitary end, is questionable. An exclusive pri- 
vilege of lying in a predominant party, is a premium for 
its encouragement $ and an equality in the right between ri- 
val parties, may produce a reciprocal check. 

Detraction and flattery also afford some correction to 
each other, and diminish the mischiefs produced by the ex- 
elusive agency of either. The zeal of governments against 
detraction, has caused them to overlook the malignity of 
flattery without its check. The falsehood of one, deducts 
from the falsehood of the other. Leave flattery without 
the subtracter, detraction, and the quantity of falsehood is 
increased, both by the natural disposition of flattery, and 
also by an artificial excitement of that disposition. Thus 
also sedition laws create more falsehood than they destroy, 
and of a more pernicious nature. If they destroy the spe- 
cies of falsehood, which calumniates individuals, they 
create that called adulation to governments | and to des- 
troy a small evil, foster a great one. The delirium provoked 
by the sweet poison, flattery, is often assuaged and even cur- 
ed by the bitter antidote, detraction. The medicine, how- 
ever acrimonious, may not be invariably useless to indivi- 
duals ; and it invariably, as to governments, produces the 
wholesome effect of causing them to turn their eyes upon 
themselves ; a spectacle which the mirror of flattery never 
justly reflects. 

Sedition laws are as often suggested by a love of truth, 
as religious laws, by a love of God. The former enlighten 
men politically, as the latter do religiously. Civil liberty 
flows from one policy, in streams as copious, as religious 
does from the other. A restraint of religious discussion by 
law, is exploded in the United States, because idolatry, 
fraud and oppression, are the fruits of this restraint. Will 
ft restraint of political discussion, produce knowledge, truth 

r>2 



482 THE GOOB MORAL PRINCIPLES OP THE 

and liberty ? Have we torn this mantle of imposture from 
false £ods. wherewith to enrobe false patriots ? 

Having submitted to the consideration of (lie reader a 
Few general arguments to prove, that for the preservation 
of civi! libsrty, sound policy dictates an unlimited freedom 
of discussion, concerning magistrates and their measures ; 
and that if the magistracy' can restrain discussion, human 
roason, instead* of being a cheek, will be made an accom- 
plice of usurpation ,* it behoves us now to view the question 
under the (particular policy of the United States, 

Without stopping to explain the consequences of a com- 
mon power in the general and state governments to make 
and modify sedition ; to declare the same words to be false 
and penal there, and" true and meritorious here : and with- 
out anticipating the mutual reprisals* to be expected, from 
these pretended, cruisers after truth, detached by aggression 
or defence iuto their respective territories ; let us come at 
onee to the fundamental principle of our policy and constitu- 
tions, and consider whether it can be sustained, under a go- 
vernment regulating publick opinion* by law, judges and 
juries. 

A nation, to retain- rights r or exercise self government, 
must be an intellectual and political being, Thinking is as 
necessary to a body politick, to enable it to shun evil and 
obtain good, as to any other reasonable being, If a monarch, 
an aristocracy, or a parliament, possess the sovereignty of 
a country, a doctrine that these sovereignties should not 
think, speak or discuss, except according to such rules 
as should be prescribed to them by the people, would be 
equivalent to the doctrine, that a nation possessing the sove- 
reignty, should not think, speak or discuss, except according 
to such rules as should be prescribed to them by a monarch, 
an aristocracy or a parliament. In both cases the sove- 
reignty would be transferred from the automatical to the 
prescribing power, 

Suppose an aristocracy to hold the sovereignty, and the 
rest of a nation to assemble and prescribe to it rules for 
thinking, sneaking or discussing, enforced by punishments 



GOVERNMENT OE THE V. STATES* 483 

to be inflicted by judges of national appointment ; if such 
a regimen would transfer the sovereignty from an aristocra- 
cy to the people, it follows that tbe same, only reversing 
the case, will transfer it from the people to any political pow- 
er, however composed, which can thus prescribe and en- 
force, as to them. 

This demonstration is ingeniously evaded, by resort- 
ing to the representative quality of our policy, and thence 
inferring, that such rules or laws are to be considered as the 
act of the people, or of the sovereignty itself, by its repre- 
sentatives; or as restraints imposed by one's own will, up- 
on one's self. 

Under this decoy, every measure of the government, in- 
tended directly or indirectly to transfer the sovereignty from 
the nation to itself, might be hidden. There can hardly ex- 
ist a degree of sagacity, unequal to its detection. 

Election and representation may be united with a sove- 
reignty of orders ; it cannot therefore of itself constitute a 
sovereignty of the people* Election and orders act together 
under the English policy ; there, election disavows the ex- 
istence of a sovereignty of the people; here, to cover as- 
saults upon this sovereignty, it is said to be constituted by 
election, and exercised by representation. In England, say 
the disciples of the same political system, representation 
helps to take sovereignty from the people, and bestows it 
upon the government 5 but in America, representation takes it 
from the government, and bestows it upon the people. In 
England, suffrage and sovereignty are considered as distinct, 
and suffrage is allowed no portion of sovereignty ; here they 
are considered as one and the same, by those who are for giv- 
ing the sovereign power to the government, merely to amuse 
the people with its shadow. 

By allowing to the people that species of sovereignty, 
which can be found in suffrage and representation, and no 
other, it results, that the people may bo deprived of free 
discussion without injuring their sovereignty ; according to 
the facetious corallary ; that if I choose a sovereign, i aa; 



■&84 THE GOOD MOKJX PRINCIPLES O? THE 

myself a sovereign. But, rejecting this mode of reasoning, 
and allowing to nations a right of self government or a na* 
tional sovereignty, anterior to suffrage ; the primitive of 
suffrage itself and the antecedent of law ; it realizes a na- 
tional free right of discussion, as radical as the right of self 
government itself, because the one cannot exist without the 
other. 

Illustrations of this reasoning may be drawn from the 
English parliament. Though the house of commons is the 
creature of suffrage, this very house denies to its elector, 
any portion of sovereignty, and constitutes, with the other 
orders, the sovereign power. In its character of sovereign- 
ty, it exercises the right of free discussion, because this 
n.^ii is essential to sovereignty. Deprived of it, the house 
of eommons would constitute no portion of a sovereignty 
Deprived of the same right, the people can constitute no 
portion of a sovereignty. The people have suffrage and 
representation in England, but not free discussion ; and the. 
parliament without the two first, and with the last, possesses 
the sovereignty. It is thence evident, that the sovereignty 
of the parliament arises from the right of free discussion* 
and the want of sovereignty in the people, from the loss of 
that right. Parliamentary will, opinion and sovereignty, is 
pf course substituted for national. The parliament res- 
trains individuals by sedition laws, upon the same principle 
that the people of the United States restrain governments* 
political departments and publick officers, by constitutions. 
The English nation suffer, what the American people in- 
flict :. namely, political restraints ; because that nation is 
the subject o 4 " parliamentary sovereignty, and our govern- 
ment is the subject of national sovereignty. Sovereignty 
only is competent to iniiiet, and subjection to suffer, politi- 
cal regulations and restraints. Monarchs never think of 
imposing these regulations and restraints upon themselves* 
, by constitutions or sedition laws, because sovereignty is una- 
ble to restrain sovereignty. My will to day, cannot bind 
my will to-morrow* If the prior will should resolve t<* 



GOVERNMENT O* THE V. STATES, %$$ 

punish the posterior, the resolution would be abrogated by 
the posterior will, whenever the period of punishment 
should arrive If an absolute monarch should by election 
constitute a power, and invest it with a right of inflicting 
upon his intellects, whatever political restraints and regula- 
tions this elective power pleased, the destruction of his sove- 
reignty would follow. The fallacious idea, that election 
will secure sovereignty, has cheated many nations of liber- 
ty, but not a single monarch of despotism. 

"We must stop for a moment to explain to the reader what 
is meant by « political rules and regulations." If he should 
recollect a distinction formerly stated, between political and 
municipal law, he would presently discern the force of our 
reasoning. I*y one, it was said, governments are regulat- 
ed ,• by the other, individuals. The latter species of law* 
comprises the whole scope of legislation, which a free na- 
tion can part with ; the former, it must forever retain and 
pronounce, or cease to be free. The treacherous art of 
blending these objects is exercised by sedition laws. They 
profess to regulate individuals, but design to regulate the 
form of government. They are nominally municipal, and 
operatively political law. The dictator over discussion* 
is a dictator over decision. Volumes of cases might 
be cited, in which nations have gradually lost their li- 
berty, hy an insidious introduction of a political regimen* 
under a municipal title $ and these cases forcibly recom- 
mend to the United States a wakeful memory of the solemn 
truth, that every government which can innovate by civil 
upon political law, is despotick. 

The opinions under discussion, are, that the elective po- 
licy transfers sovereignty from the electors to the elected ;; 
that every act of a representative government is an act of the 
nation ; and that the nation possesses only that imperfect 
and evanescent species of sovereignty, the right of suf- 
frage. 

If representation destroys that which it implies, namely y 
Subordination, then it can annul or alter constitutions ; and 



4S6 THE GOOD MORAL PRINCIPLES OP *£W& 

if the act of their representatives is the act of the people, 
representation constitutes a sovereignty incapable of limita- 
jtion. Necessity compels us to consider our policy or con- 
stitutions upon a supposition, that these opinions are true 
or false. If they are true, these constitutions are subject 
to the sovereign representation. If they are false, then 
the existence of a sovereignty over representation, is de- 
monstrated. 

The imperative style of our political decalogues called 
constitutions, implies the existence of some superior power # 
whose organs they are ; whilst the doctrine, that this pow- 
er, by having thought and spoken once, had lost the right 
of thinking and speaking forever, is equivalent to an asser- 
tion, that the Deity, by prescribing the Mosaiek dispensa- 
tion, had forfeited the right of prescribing the Christian. 

If a sovereign power, by one declaration oi'its will, docs 
not lose its sovereignty, it must retain also an unlimited 
freedom, in whatsoever is necessary towards any future de- 
claration of its will^ otherwise its first will, must be its last 

win. 

An intellectual political being, differs essentially from 
an intellectual physical being. The first can only think by 
speaking and writing, as it is compounded of many indivi- 
duals. If it is not allowed to think freely, it can never de 
cide or act according to its own will, since its will can only 
be discovered by freedom of expression. This position Is 
demonstrated by considering the process, necessary to form 
the opinions of a body politick and of an individual. A 
comparison of ideas is necessary in both cases. The body 
politick being composed of many distinct minds, cannot-com- 
pare its ideas, except by collecting them through the exter- 
nal mediums of speaking and writing, or by free discussion » 
whereas an individual can compare his ideas, hy the inter- 
nal operation of thought. An individual may therefore de- 
cide, or discover his opinion, because no human law can 
prevent him from thinking or comparing his ideas ; but a 
bsdy politick may be prevented from knowing or exercising 



GOVERNMENT OF THE V, STATES, 45<? 

i*s opinions, because human laws can prevent it from 
thinking, by free discussion, either to fix or to discover 
them. 

Sovereignty is an intellectual political being. In 
Britain, it is parliamentary ; in America, national. Pub- 
lick opinion, ought to rule, according to our policy; parlia- 
mentary, according to her's. Had the English king pos- 
sessed a power, to regulate by penalties, the discussions in 
the house of commons, its freedom of opinion would have 
been equivalent to the freedom of national opinion here, un- 
der such a power in the government. If each individual of 
the parliament, was confined separately in a dungeon, and 
brought out once a year to give a silent vote, parliamentary 
opinion and sovereignty would be, what national opinion and 
sovereignty becomes, under an inhibition of free discussion. 
Conferences by stealth, would be modes for discovering pub- 
Jick opinion in a wide territory, even less effectual, than the 
echo of those groans, which would resound among the cells 
of these incarcerated parliamentary sovereigns. 

The argument for depriving nations of the right of 
thinking, by speaking and writing, is, that a nation may 
have bad thoughts. An individual may also have bad 
thoughts, and the same argument would, if it could, put 
an end to his thinking. Members of the British sove- 
reignty, may also have bad thoughts, but they are supposed 
to be overbalanced by the good. Imperfect man's best 
prospects, must be confided to a preponderance of good 
thoughts, in respect to sovereignties, governments and in- 
dividuals ; and to deprive either of thinking, lest the 
thoughts should be bad, would cut off the prospect of deriv- 
ing any good from the subject of this deprivation. It is 
moreover an ineffectual remedy for the evil, because no pre- 
scribing power can be found, which may not itself have bad 
thoughts. Governments must have infinitely more bad 
thoughts than nations, because they can acquire wealth and 
power by their bad thoughts ; whereas nations, by theirs, 
ean only gain misfortune or. despotism. Nations err uo> 



<S88 THE 1 GOOD MORAX PRINCIPLES OF THE 

designedly. Governments are liable to the same source ot 
errour, and it also pours in upon them through the sluices 
opened by ambition, avarice, and a great variety of human 
vices, which sleep least under the strongest incitements to 
awake. To cure the propensity of human nature for 
vicious projects, by constituting a dictatorial power over 
the rights of thinking and discussing, in which the same 
propensity exists, in its most aggravated state, is plung- 
ing into the ocean, for fear of being drowned in a bucket of 
water. 

We have been endeavouring to illustrate the defect of 
Mr. Adams's system, and of all others constituted of orders, 
by shewing the inefReacy and ambiguity of the sense annex- 
ed by them, to the expressions, " national rights and nation- 
al opinion ;" rights, supposed to be secured by an incapa- 
city of acting from intellectual conviction ; and opinion to 
be formed without thinking by a free comparison of ideas. 

National rights and opinions, held or moulded at the 
pleasure of governments, are the creatures of a species of . 
political transubstantiation, which declares it to be heresy, 
not to believe, that the opinion and will of a government, is 
the opinion and will of a nation. That bread and wine, are 
indeed flesh and blood. 

National rights and national opinion, cannot really exist, 
without powers for defending the one, and organs for ex- 
pressing the other. The system of orders must shew these 
or confess that they have provided for neither, and that it 
uses the terms as decoy phantoms to delude nations within 
its grasp. The policy of the United States, exhibits its mi 
litia, its right of bearing arms, its rights retained, its right 
of instruction, and its inclusive right of abolishing the en- 
tire government. 

Our policy, considering a nation as possessing rights 
it cannot alienate, secures its will and ability to protect 
them, by moral and physical means. It provides election, 
attempered by free discussion, as a moral mode of subject- 
ing gOTernments to the sovereignty of the nation, and m£ 



tfOVEKNMENT OF THE U. S*TATES> %$& 

to subject the nation to a sovereignty of the government. 
And it provides a militia, as the physical mode for securing 
obedience to the moral means by which the will of the na- 
tion is disclosed. Like twins growing to each other, either 
of these guardians of national sovereignty perishes, if the 
other ceases to exist. Sedition laws destroy one, and stand- 
ing armies the other. Either, therefore, terminate in des- 
potism ; a militia deprived of its intellectual associate, pre- 
se;itlv becomes a maniaek, who must be disarmed and 
guarded by a mercenary army, which confines him to a bed 
of straw, and feeds him upon bread and water. And intel- 
lectual freedom, severed from its physical friend, i9 John 
the Baptist preaching to a wilderness. United, they are the 
body and soul of popular government, just as free will and 
a standing army, are the body and soul of monarchy e Des- 
troy the body or soul of cither, and the whole being dies. 

If these reasonings are correct, the inconsistency be- 
tween a sovereignty of the people, and a power in govern- 
ment to regulate the thoughts or discussions of this sove- 
reignty, is such, a* to render it impossible that both qualities 
can subsist in one government. 

One of them must be unequivocally surrendered by a 
candid politician, unless he can devise a species of dual sove- 
reignty, upon the principles of the Athanasian creed. Even 
then his political creed would fall short of the perspicuity of 
its model, if he allowed the sovereignty of government, to 
regulate by sedition laws the sovereignty of the people. He 
would have to prove that a political almighty, could beget 
a more potent almighty. 

The existence of national sovereignty is asserted every 
where by the policy of the United States, and under its aus- 
pice the general constitution sought for a sanction by the 
terms, « We the people." Rob it of this sanction, and what 
is its obligation ? Or suppose the people had as unequivocal- 
ly relinquished, as they have exercised their sovereignty by 
that instrument, still the question would have turned upon 



&9Q THE GOOD MORAL PRIXC1PXES OF THE 

the power of one generation, to surrender a natural right of 
another. 

Admitting this power to exist, and admitting also that the 
establishment of a government is a virtual surrender on the 
part of the people of their sovereignty, according to the 
ideas of Mr. Adams, and of all those who assert, that on this 
?vent, sovereignty deserts its old habitation, and transfuses 
itself into a new one ; just as some conjurers can shoot their 
souls out of one body into another. Allowing these conces- 
sions to be true, a new dilemma arises from an idea here- 
tofo?*e suggested. The people had established governments 
previously to the erection of the general government : and if 
this act causes a transmigration of the soul of sovereignty 
from a nation, the people had no remaining sovereignty 
to transfuse into the general government. This doctrine 
would make the state governments sovereigns, over which 
the people could not more rightfully place a sovereign, than 
they now can over the general government. Thus the 

nly sanction of the federal government, consists in the doc- 
trine of popular sovereignty; or that governments are 
agents, and not masters. Deprive it of this, and it becomes 
a rebel against the sovereignty of etate governments. Mr. 
Adams both laboured to plant state policy in British prin- 
ciples, which deny any species of sovereignty to the people ; 
and testified ia favour of the sovereignty of the people, 
by allowing the federal to be a legitimate government. 

As the federal government cannot legitimately exist, ex- 
cept by admitting that the people are the sovereigns of go- 
vernments ; so the system of orders, or checks and balances, 
cannot exist, except by admitting it to be the sovereign of 
the people. National sovereignty would throw into confu- 
sion all the weights, and unhinge the whole architecture of 
the checks and balances. Accordingly, no instance has oc- 

urred of orders, admitting themselves to be bound by popu- 
lar conventions, as did the state governments in the case of 

the federal constitution. Thus we discern, that sedition 

laws are consistent with the system of orders, Air the same. 



GOVERNMENT OF TilE U* STATES. 491 

reason which makes them inconsistent with the policy of the 
tJnited States. The sovereignty of orders being maintain- 
able, only by reserving to itself free discussion, and impos- 
ing restraints upon the people, it follows, that national so* 
vereignty is only maintainable, by reserving free discussion 
to the people, and imposing restraints upon the government. 
The rapture with which we contemplate the exclusive abili- 
ty of our policy to subject government to limitations, would 
excite ridicule, united with the doctrine, " that the power 
** upon which the enforcement of these limitations depend- 
" ed, could be bound in legal chains, by the power upon 
* which they were to operate." These beacons, erected 
In our political territory, to warn us of an enemy's approach, 
would be dead lights, if law should prohibit the only mode 
by which they can be kindled. 

If our constitutions admit the sovereignty of the peo- 
ple ,* if the federal government is erected on that founda- 
tion ; and if no species of sovereignty can exist without 
freedom of will and of discussion ; it follows, that laws for 
restraining or regulating discussion, are axes which cut up 
our policy at its root. 

Had national sovereignty been a splendid phantasm, as 
its enemies contend, it could neither have been seen, assailed 
or defended. Without adverting to its works in the United 
States, it is sufficient to inquire, why its grave and learned 
enemies, have engaged so earnestly in a warfare with an 
unsubstantial spectre. The renowned knight of La Man- 
eha himself, was unable to make giants out of nothing.. A 
dream of infatuation, does not possess the power of crea- 
tion, nor can a shadow overturn a tree. 

Many political writers, including Mr. Adams, assail the 
•principle of national sovereignty, by paying it obeisance, no£ 
for the purpose of yielding to that, but to induce that to 
yield to their systems. As a phantasm, a dream or a shadow, 
they do it homage ; they only object to it, as a being of sub- 
stance, efficacy and activity. It is said, that publick opinion 
will have its weight even in despotick government^, merely 
to prevail on it to submit to them. 



4#2 THE GOOD MORAL PRINCIPLES OF THE 

The slow and whispered admonitions of publick opinion 
to tyranny, are struggles of nature for her rights, exeitetf 
by acquisitions of knowledge ; like the efforts and uneasi- 
ness of a strong man, long confined in darkness, excited by 
a ray of light. Upon every appearance of these struggles, 
orders and exclusive privileges cry out, that kings? aristo- 
crats, priests and privileges ought to mite, and conune iter 
in stronger bonds. What is thus feared, flattered and let- 
tered, cannot be a shadow. Had it been a shadow* it would 
not have been regarded and treated J'ke a strong man in 
pursuit of his rights, by those who withhold them. 

If national sovereignty may be assailed, it mav be de» 
fended. Said an American general to his men, " you see 
those fellows yonder, if you don't kill them, they will kill 
you." By the same terms, the attention of national sovereign- 
ty or publick opinion, would be correctly and emphatically 
directed to orders and exclusive privileges. This would be 
incorrect, says Mr. Adams's system ; orders and exclusive 
privileges do not kill publick opinion, they only gag her 
with law, and point at her breast the bayonets of a standing 
army, lest she should use force to free her intellects. Still 
this system asserts, that publick opinion will have an in 
floenee over despotism itself. Stephano gags Trineulo, lest 
he should speak ; cuts off his fingers, lest he should write ; 
and imprisons him for groaning ; yet Trineulo retains an 
influence over Stephano, arising from an apprehension of 
his escape* Bui an image, sometimes worshipped and some- 
times whipt, by its savage subjects, is a less miserable sove- 
reign than Trineulo. 

The effects of a sovereignty of law over discussion and 
opinion are multifarious $ all of them are sappers of the 
principle of national self government. A few more will 
be adducedo 

It begins, by making it criminal to calumniate a form of 
government; it proceeds, to make it criminal to calumniate 
those individuals invested with most power, and most sub- 
ject to the crime of usurpation ; and it ends by making 



GOVERNMENT OF THE U. STATES 495 

every species of writing and speaking criminal, tending to 
obstruct the avarice or ambition of the power which legis- 
lates, or which can influence legislation. Thus govern- 
ments make of calumny a spunge, to expunge their own 
crimes. They affect to take the side of truth to hide false- 
hood, as they do the side of religion, to hide the frauds oi 
hierarchy. An attempt to aid by penalties the cause of re- 
ligion and truth, is a proclamation of imposture. These 
champions have ever found them their enemies. The pen- 
alties which extorted Galileo's renunciation of his discove- 
ries, attempted to fix and flatten this earth for truth's sake. 
Laws for regulating truth and religion, like Sampson's haisj, 
strengthen as they grow ; and governments not be? 
are at length enabled by them to pull tfcwr 
election and militia; and instead of being bi their 

ruins, to convert them into castles for 

Suppose such laws should make it criminal : 
niate some oiScers and not others; will nottoor 
ed by the law, be more responsible to publick opinion, 
those it covers ? Will not election operate more forcibly ass 
to those whose qualities it can sift by free discussion, than 
as to those whose qualities cannot be canvassed with equal 
safety ? It might be made as dangerous to speak irreverent 
ly of a president's posteriors, as it was of old to look upon 
the ^Egis of Minerva.* Every one can correctly estimate 
the value of a right of discussion, free in relation to a con- 
stable, but restricted in relation to a president. 

The pleasure of the government may leave those offi- 
cers exposed to free discussion, or amenable to the sove- 
reignty of the people, who can do no mischief; and cover 
those against it, who can overturn our policy. This plea- 
sure may allow this sovereignty, more freedom of discus- 
sion as to the same officers in one year than in another, ia 
imitation of the suspensions of the habeas corpus act in 

* The case of Baldwin in New Jersey, here alluded to, ought to be pic- 
served as a monument, to remind the United States, of the ahort work of- 
sedition laws, in destroying the freedom of speech 



$$4 THE GOOB MORAiL PRINCIPLES OF THE 

England. In short, this pleasure may diminish or increase 
the information and power of this sovereignty, according to 
its own views ; and if there should he factions, it may easi* 
ly allow more freedom to one faction or portion of this 
sovereignty, than to another. 

Such a subject sovereignty or counterfeit republicanism, 
is precisely that held by the people of England, France and, 
Turkey ; and that conceded to all nations by the theory of 
or«!ers. Wherever such a theory becomes a government, 
the sovereignty of the people becomes a theory* Whether 
national sovereignty or self government is converted into 
theory by parliaments, judges, juries, prisons and Botany 
bay; or by national assemblies, soldiers and Cayenne : or by 
the koran and the sabre ; all are equally the instruments 
of usurpation and tyranny used to repel the lashes of pub* 
lick opinion in proportion as they are merited. The Eng- 
lish government can inflict perpetual imprisonment, in de- 
fiance of their boasted habeas corpus, without trial, upon 
any member of Mr. Adams's theoretical national sovereign- 
ty it pleases, should he endeavour to exercise his sove- 
reign function, by proving, that tiie government was op- 
pressive and ought to be changed ; whilst his species of the 
sovereignty of the people, and their species of habeas cor- 
pus provision, would lie in his book, and among their sta- 
tutes, as pictures of lifeless and forgotten rights. 

Usurpation, perpetrated or designed, invariably resorts 
to sedition laws, because by suppressing discussion, it de- 
fends itself against suppression. What ! Are these laws 
also defenders of national sovereignty or self govern- 
ment ? Will they, like Swiss soldiers, fight equally well 
for spurious or for legitimate sovereignty ? Will a suppres- 
sion of discussion, be equally serviceable to a sovereignty 
which lives upon iVee discussion, and to one which can- 
not live, until free discussion is dead ? Can an usurp- 
er and a nation secure sovereignty by the same code ? 

The friends of sedition laws will not be able to answer 
these question!?, without first proving that freedom of 



GOVERNMENT OF THE U. STATES. 495 

writing and speaking is unfriendly to every species of sove- 
reignty, whether of the people or of orders, whether spu- 
rious or legitimate ; and its suppression eo-extensively fa- 
vourable to all, however dissimilar in principle. It- will be 
impossible to do this, so long as the relation between cause 
and effect shall subsist in the moral world. 

Sedition laws have been used in all ages to defend go* 
vernments, because the idea of the sovereignty of the peo- 
ple, or of national self government, was never well under- 
stood, unequivocally asserted, or successfully practised, ex- 
cept iu the United States of America. This old way of 
maintaining forms of government, would be more likely to 
renovate them* than to invigorate our new policy. By 
transfusing it into their body politick, the United States 
will practice the Medean method of changing their age, in- 
geniously reversed ; they may suddenly transform their po- 
litical youth, health and vigour, into the old age, infirmity 
and decrepitude of some ancient policy. 

The idea of a sovereign subject to law ; the idea of a 
responsibility, which can impose penalties on an investiga- 
tion of its acts ; and the idea of a publick opinion, whilst 
every member of the publick is liable to be committed to 
prison for expressing an opinion ; a publick opinion buried 
in the grave of silence ; these ideas must be found in our 
constitutions, to empower our governments to govern the 
right of free discussion, by armies or laws ; by generals or 
judges. That the people never entertained them, is demon 
stratcd by dissolving and creating constitutions, wjth a deli- 
beration enlightened by discussipn, for the purpose of dis- 
covering publick opinion. 

These conspicuous proofs of national capacity to ex- 
press an opinion, and the supreme authority of that opinion, 
undeniably demonstrate that our policy is founded in the 
idea* that national sovereignty is either a natural or social 
principle, and our constitutions unequivocally assert alle- 
giance to be due to it, both from their creatures, govern* 
ments ; and even from themselves, the creators of govern- 



§96 THE GOOD MORAL PRINCIPLES OE THE 

merits. - ft follows, that the amendment to the general con- 
stitution, respecting the freedom of religion, speaking a/id 
writing, or any other part of it, cannot he so construed, ae 
to bestow upon government a power inconsistent with its ele- 
m?utary principle. Such a mode of reasoning, would only be 
a repetition of the idea of cutting off a king's head, by vir- 
tue of his authority ; and if a stagnation of free discussion 
will as effectually kill the moral being, national sovereign- 
ty, as a stagnation of blood would the physical being called 
a ki ig, then sedition laws are as favourable to national 
sovereignty, as the decapitation of kings to monarchy. The 
circulation of rational ideas by free discussion, is as much 
a vital principle of the one, as the circulation of the blood of 
kings is of the other. 

There is a strong resemblance in some measures taken 
against each other, by contrary political principles. Tho 
head of Charles was assailed by the axe, under his authori- 
ty, under protestations of loyalty to monarchy, and under 
the pretext of reforming abuses. National sovereignty, the 
bead of our policy, has also been assailed even by opposite 
aarties, acting under its authority, tinder protestations of 
loyalty to this sovereignty, and under the pretext of pre- 
venting sedition. It is wiser to strike at the head than at an 
inferior member, when a revolution is contemplated. A 
proposition to put out one of Charles's eyes, or to change 
the ratio of representation here, would probably have excit- 
ed greater opposition than more deadly measures. By 
striking at a vital part, success ends the war. As republi- 
canism aimed at the vital part of monarchy when she struck 
Charles's head, monarchy aims at the vital part of republi- 
canism, by striking at free discussion. Deadly enemies 
strike at mortal parts. 

If the third amendment to the federal constitution? 
was not intended to destroy the elementary principle of 
our policy, an effort to place that policy beyond the reach 
of the imperfection of language, and the sophisms of con- 
struction, is the only remaining intention, which can with 



GOVERNMENT OF THE XT. STATES* 497 

any colour be ascribed to it. Religion, speaking and writ- 
ing, were placed beyond the power of law, because the fi st 
appertained to the sovereignty of the deity, and the two last 
to the sovereignty of the people. Why does not the const!** 
tution reserve a right to think ? lleeause that faculty 
could not be taken away, and It was reserving a na* 
tional and political faculty, which could be taken awayj 
being that, by which alone nations can supervise gov- 
ernments, retain sovereignty, or perform political func- 
tions. 

A political national mind, required a protection against 
the usurpation of governments. The mind of an individual 
was beyond its reach ; but a congeries of expressions con- 
stituting national mind, was within it. If the latter spe» 
«ies of mind does not exist, how inconsistent are those, who 
talk of national opinion. Where does it reside ? It is not 
the opinion of an individual. It is not the opinions of any 
number of separate and solitary individuals. If it can ex- 
ist without discussion, it cannot without disclosure $ and 
the freedom of speech and of the press, is as necessary for 
the latter purpose, as for the former. 

An objection is urged against the idea of national sove- 
reignty, with a degree of plausibility, unable to avoid the 
detection of a degree of considerations Are not the people, 
it is said, subject to law ? and is not their sovereignty incon- 
sistent with this subjection ? 

The repetition necessary to answer this objection, Is not 
painful, because it will impress a principle of the last im- 
portance to the policy of the United States. 

The people, by our policy, are considered as possessing 
two capacities, political and civil. Under one, they are sus- 
ceptible of the rights which nations can exercise f such as 
those of forming, reforming and supervising governments. 
Under the other, they are susceptible, individually, of such 
rights and duties, as an individual may hold or owe. As 
an individual cannot hold or exercise the first class of 
rights, a nation must he considered in the light tCa» asse- 
ss 



*S8 THE GOOD MORAL PRINCIPLES Of THE 

dated, political and moral being, or these rights can nei- 
ther exist, be held, or exercised. 

The first species of capacity we assign to the people, ope- 
rates between them and governments ; the second, between 
governments and individual*, and between citizens. It is 
our policy to subject the whole field of this second capacity 
to legislation, and to exclude it from the whole field of the 
first. Law is allowed to regulate right and wrong in the lat- 
ter cases, but not between the nation and its government. It 
cannot form a new government. The right to do this being 
held by nations, and not by governments or individuals, is 
evidence that nations hold rights in a moral and social capa- 
city, not subject to law. A form of government being an- 
terior to law, cannot be created by it; and the social rights 
of nations, cannot be destroyed by political laws, concealed 
under municipal titles, if law cannot create a form of go- 
vernment. 

An unsubjeeted sovereignty, composed of subjected in- 
dividuals, is the supposed inconsistency upon which the ob- 
jection rests. 

And yet the same inconsistency, if it be one, exists in the 
system of government, chiefly admired by the objectors them- 
selves. The British sovereignty is unsubjeeted, and is com- 
posed of subjected individuals. Every member of the par- 
liament of which this sovereignty is composed, including 
the king himself, is subject to municipal law r . Where then 
is the absurdity, inconsistency or impolicy, of composing a 
sovereignty of subjects ? It is, in fact, the common and 
plain case, of an individual, holding corporate rights, and 
owing corporate duties % or of a corporation, which governs 
its members, and yet is governed by them. 

The idea, that a nation must necessarily be divided be- 
tween sovereignty and subjection, to form a government, 
allotting one or a few to the first principle, and the mass of 
the people to the second, is precisely the barbarous opinion, 
which has always made tyrants and slaves. The whole me* 
r\%. of the British system, consists in a partial refutation of 



/ 
GOVERNMENT OF THE IT, STATESi 4t)fe 

thi3 opinion. That this refutation did not go as far, 
Whilst it acknowledged the principle of ours, arose mere- 
ly from the orders and separate interests in which the na- 
tion was split, some of whom used it to gain the substance of 
liberty for themselves, and to. amuse the people with its 
shadow. 

The English system captivated the nation, in disclosing 
the borders of republican principles, by lodging sovereignty 
in orders ; ours has only passed these borders, ami gotten 
into the country itself, by lodging it in the nation, in- 
stead of orders. Both orders and nations are composed 
of subjects. 

The repetition with which we threatened the reader, 
consists of the illustration furnished by this reasoning, to the 
distinction formerly taken between political and municipal 
law. The power possessed by its members over a corpora- 
tion, represents one ; that possessed by a corporation over 
its members, the other. If a minority of this corporations 
invested with limited powers to transact certain special af- 
fairs for the whole, should restrict or destroy the right of 
the majority to discuss and censure their conduct, it would 
be exactly a sedition law under our policy, and from 
that moment the nature of the corporation would be 
changed. 

The chief beauty of the English system, is said to consist 
in the restraints of orders upon each other, by mutual jea- 
lousy ; hut the animosity inspired by it, has disfigured the 
national good by many a scar. The chief beauty of our po- 
licy, consists of a mutual power in the people and govern- 
ment, to restrain each other, by political law on one hand, 
and municipal on the other; these powers do not clash; the 
first is influenced by national good, and the second by pri- 
vate justice ; and neither by the ambition, jealousy or ha- 
tred of orders. These two systems arc clear mirrors re- 
flecting their effects ; it is only necessary to look into theni* 
to decide the preference. 



#00 THE GOOD MOKAX PRINCIPLES OF THE 

The affinity between the freedom of religion and of dis- 
cussion, or between the right of an individual, to provide for 
his eternal, and of a nation, to provide for its temporal wel- 
fare, has coupled them in one sentence, and confided both 
to one security ; so that the government possesses an equal 
right to regulate religious and political discussion, by fine 
and imprisonment. Glance your eye, reader, at courts and 
juries, composed of opinion, religious or political, to try 
opinion. Do you not see hierarchy or faction, ambition or 
avarice, superstition or tyranny, invariably pronouncing 
sentence? A trial of opinion can never be fair or just. 
Whoever is of my opinion, acquits, of an adverse, condemae 
me. Where nature disables us from judging impartially, 
it forbids us to judge at all. The right of A to condemn 
B, is no better than the right of B to condemn A ; and a 
clashing right cannot be a right in either. Monarchy, aris- 
tocracy, democracy, an ! sects, religious and political? 
judge of each other's opinions, as the Pope judged Calvin ; 
Calvin, Servetus ; the independents, Charles ; and Crom- 
well, the independents ; the precise species of judging a£ 
which the sacred prohibition discloses itself to be levelled, 
by its reference to the probability of retaliation — >" Judge 
not, lest ye be judged." 

Whether any consanguinity originally exists or not, be 
tween the freedom of religion and of discussion, the simila- 
rity between the moral effects of such freedom in. relation to 
both, is evident. 

Wherever churches regulate religious opinion, and go- 
vernments, political, persecution rages, pecuniary burdens 
multiply, blood flows and wretches burn. An abandonment 
of the regulation of religious opinion, discloses the effects of 
a similar policy with regard to political. Both species of 
regulation are exterminated by our policy, and we happily 
know only from books, that both prefer flattery to truth, 
persecution to liberty, and the money of the people to .their 
happiness. 



GOVERNMENT OF THE 17. STATES, 50 i 

In the execution of religious sedition laws, each sect, 
when in power, appeals to its own party to determine, whe- 
ther the complaints of their opponents are not excessively 
unreasonable. <« They are allowed," says the law- maker* 
" to preach freely, provided they will preach truth, and 
" they ought not to preach falsehood." " Nothing can he 
u more reasonable," is the response of the law- maker'? 
party to the law-maker's appeal. 

If the abolition of religious sedition laws has abolished 
religious wars, why may not the abolition of civil sedition 
laos, abolish civil wars? Admitting a similarity in their 
nature and consequences, a discovery by which the tongue 
and the pen are made to fight all the battles of religion, wilj 
probably be able to coniine political combatants to the same 
weapons. 

The experience of the United States furnishes a mul- 
titude of precedents in favour of this opinion. Constitutions 
and governments have been frequently made and destroy ed y 
without war, commotion or inconvenience. But it was done 
in the absence of sedition laws, standing armies and rich 
monopolies. 

These moral beings are generally contemporaries; 
either is soon followed by the others. The climax of their 
appearance in the United States has preserved its uniformi- 
ty. A funding system, a sedition law, an army. So un- 
founded is the idea, that authors of sedition laws design 
them to preserve publick tranquillity, that they never fail to 
provide armies to quell the commotions, which they foresee 
that these laws will excite. 

Ifitistrue, as we have hitherto contended, that free 
discussion is the creator, the preceptor and the organ of 
publick opinion ; the guardian of national sovereignty and 
of religious freedom; the seedsman of political knowledge, 
and the guarantee of moderate government ; this pre- 
cious jewel in our policy is rendered inestimable, as another 
link in our chain of national rights, necessary to bestow 
efficacy upon election- Our policy and experience, must 



502 THE GOOD MOEAX PRIXCrFIES OF THB 

either overturn Mr*. Adams's system, or be overturned by it 
To his system, armies, patronage,, paper and sedition laws 
are congenial, because sovereignty is lodged in orders. 
These, consisting of a minority, and possessing only afacti* 
tious and fraudulent sovereignty, need such auxiliaries. 
They must of necessity resort to armies, patronage, privt- 
leges, corruption and sedition laws, or surrender the sove- 
reignty. These are suitable to a sovereignty of orders, be- 
cause they impair or destroy the sovereignty of the people. 
But our system renders armies, patronage, privileges, cor- 
ruption and sedition laws unnecessary, by placing sovereign- 
ty in a majority, which needs no auxiliary, can find none, 
is able to defend itself, and attracts no enmity from a better 
title. A transition from the sovereignty of the people to 
the sovereignty of a government, is a revolution only to be 
effected by artificial accumulations of power or wealth, by 
armies, patronage, privileges, paper or sedition laws ; of 
course these instruments are mortal enemies to our 
policy. 

We will take leave of this subject with the following ob- 
servation. The design of substituting political for religious 
heresy, is visible in the visage of sedition laws. A civil 
priesthood or government, hunting after political heresy, is 
an humbly imitator of the inquisition, which fines, in, 
sons, tortures and murders, sometimes mind, at others, body. 
It affects the same piety, feigned by priestcraft at the burn- 
ing of an heretiek; and its party supplies such exultations, 
as those exhibited at an auto de fee, by a populace ; and the 
same passions and interest which furnish cruelty to fraud 
and superstition, banish commiseration from avarice and 
ambition, towards those guilty of the unpardonable heresy of 
opposing their designs. 

It is remarkable that the individual, so instrumental in 
disclosing the wickedness and folly of the notion, that the re- 
putation of the deity needed the protection of heretical 
laws, became also an example to prove, that the reputa- 
tion of governments and pubiick officers, did not need the 



GOVERNMENT OF STHE V. STATER 50& 

protection of sedition laws. Whilst we see the shafts of ca- 
lumny falling harmless around human integrity, we eon- 
elude, both that they can never reach celestial perfection, 
and also, that human virtue ought to recoil from an ally, 
whose resemblance to the ugliest foe of religion and piety, ig 
so exact. 

We now proceed to the consideration of two features of 
the federal constitution, which have been claimed by the 
theory of orders, and even renounced by that of self govern- 
ment. If either of these opinions are correct, then this 
essay incorrectly maintains, that the will of a majority i& 
our elementary principle. It is said, that the form of the 
senate, and the rule, that three-fourths of the states should 
concur in amending the constitution, are violations of that 
principle ; and that aristocracy is interwoven with our poli- 
cy, in the power of a minority through the states or the 
senate, to arrest amendments and to pass laws. Had thi$ 
assertion been true, our system of reasoning would have 
Inquired the arrangement of these features among the 
defects of the general constitution $ on the contrary, we 
shall arrange them among its beauties, and endeavour* to 
prove their strict conformity with the policy of the 
United States, 

Let us first consider, whether the senate is in fact de- 
formed, as some think, or embellished, according to others^ 
with aristocratical qualities. 

The federal government is the creature of two kinds 
of beings, which I will call physical and moral. Mean- 
jug by physical beings, the individuals of the United 
States ; and by moral, the state governments. Our ele- 
mentary principle in forming a government compounded 
of both, was equivalently used as the best resource for 
preserving the rights of both. Accordingly, both popular 
majority and state majority are resorted to by the consti- 
tution of the United States, upon similar principles and for 
similar endft. 



30k THE GOOD MORAL PRINCIPLES OP THE 

The principle of equality was applied to strong and 
Weak states, as it was to strong and weak men, because 
each was tree ; and that freedom brought all to a level in 
treating or confederating, just as freedom levels indivi- 
duals of unequal size, in associating. But its beneficial 
effects outstrip those produced by its application to indivi- 
duals, because of the wider range of social happiness arising 
from a society of nations, than from a society of individuals. 
And this principle has effected the supposed project of a 
French king to unite or associate Europe, as to more na- 
tions, and over a wider space, without war, expense or force ; 
although a love of the union and a hatred of political 
equality often meet in the same breast, because it is not 
perceived that the object of our affection was begotten and 
subsists by the object of our abhorrence. 

Without a federal will, to be ascertained by a majority, 
gjeace could not be preserved among the confederates, no 
separate existence of states could have been retained, and 
our new and efficacious division of power, between the ge- 
neral and state governments, must have been abandoned. 
And without a popular will, to be ascertained in the same 
inode, the natural right of self government would have been 
lost, 

The senate being formed for the first end, its democra- 
tiek complexion is equivalent to that of the house of repre- 
sentatives, constituted for the second. Both the wills pro- 
vided by the constitution to operate upon the general gov- 
ernment, are intended to produce the government of a ma- 
jority, to be determined by the principle of equality ; and 
the state governments being of unequal strength, democra- 
tical and popular, it could not have been intended, because 
it was not possible, that they should infuse aristocratical 
opinions into the senate. Just as an assent of the people to 
constitutions by conventions, cannot be considered as flow- 
ing from an aristocratical source, although given by a few 
persons. A nation has been considered as a moral or poli- 
tisai being, capable of opinion, will and sovereignty* States 



GOVERNMENT OF THE f& STATES., BOB 

are nations. When several of these are associated for 
some ends, and unassoeiated for others, distinct orders 
of political beings exist, created by distinct associations* 
Our policy provides organs to bestow efficacy on the opi- 
nions of both, because their existence itself can only be 
known or preserved by their opinions ; and the senate was 
made the organ of those moral beings called states, to., 
prevent the separate social existence of each, from being 
swallowed up by a society of all. The people have consti- 
tuted themselves into two associations ; of states, and of 
their union. As these moral or political beings, infuse in- 
to our government its spirit, one for some purposes, the 
rest for others ; and as all of them are composed of the 
same intellectual beings ; a construction which supposes, 
that our policy expected both democratical and aristoera- 
tieal influence to proceed from the same intellectual source, 
is as unphilosophical, as to expect hot and cold breath at 
the same time, from the same nostril. Separate interests 
only, and not national opinion, can furnish a government 
with opposite and contending impulses. If the states are 
not aristocratical beings, how can they produce an aristo- 
eratical being ? 

It is as foreign to the intention of our policy, to Create 
a monarch as an aristocracy. The president is the com- 
pound creature of the equality of states and the equality 
of man, both of which are infused into the mode of his elec- 
tion, for the purpose of preserving both ; and in his legisla- 
tive capacity, he is equally exposed to the control of the 
popular and state representatives. Thus doubly subjected 
to the principle of equality, by which both these bodies are 
constituted, it would be doubly inconsistent with our policy, 
should he imagine himself to be a king* 

This idea is in some degree violated, by the practices of 
district or legislative electors ; the latter of which makes 
state will, and the former, general will, the electors of a 
president ; and it is observed with great accuracy, by that 
of choosing electors by the people of a state, in the mode of 

*5 



5D5 THB GOOD MOIML PRINCIPLES OF THE 

a general ticket. This mode compounds and blends h^th 
the will of the people and the will of the states, and confers 
an influence in the election of an officer, who has most pow- 
er to assail or defend both, upon the principle of equality as 
applying both to the states and to the people. Whereas this 
union of influence between state equality and human equali- 
ty is defeated, by state electors which exclude the one, and 
by district electors which exclude the other, from a share 
in the election of the president; and the exclusion of either 
from an influence over the officer by whom it is most en- 
dangered, will weaken its means for self preservation, and 
create means for severing the union between friends, 
aeither of whom can probably exist without the other. 

But the district mode of election, is far more inconsist- 
ent with the principles of our Union, than that by state 
legislatures: because, in that mode, state will, though one 
of the parties to the union, loses its whole influence; where- 
as, in an election by state legislatures, popular will retains 
an influence upon the election of a president, equivalent to 
its influence over these legislatures. And as a state influ- 
ence in this election, is a great security to the division of 
power between the states and the general government, the 
loss of it would endanger all the securities for a free gov- 
ernment, arising from that division. 

The importance of this subject will justify an effort to 
explain our meaning by different language. It has been 
invariably contended, that the people are the source of all 
the sections of our government. They have formed them- 
selves into two societies, state and general. In establishing 
a general government, they have defended both these asso- 
ciations of their own, by constituting that government of 
three organs ; one appointed by themselves in their popular 
capacity ; another appointed by themselves, by representa- 
tion, in their state capacity ; and the third, appointed by 
themselves, partly in their popular and partly in their slate 
capacity. If the responsibility of the : sui- 

%ym, in each of its soeirj eliaraeters, i 



• VERNMUNT OF THE v. STATES. : 

pollcv is perfectly attained ; if unequal, it is in a degree do- 
eated. By legislative elections of electors, the state asso- 
ciation, by district?' the general popular association, ac- 
quires an unequal share of influence over a president. Ei- 
ther is a tendency adverse to our policy ; the first, towards 
disunion, the second, towards consolidation. An election by 
a general ticket, blends, unites and reconciles these two ca- 
pacities or associations, more completely than either of the 
other modes. 

If it is proved, by the division of the legislature between 
general and state will, and by imparting to each species of 
wi!l an influence over executive power, that the intention 
of our policy was to preserve and defend both the state and 
general associations ; how can the opinion, that the senate 
was modelled upon aristocrat ieal principles, be maintained, 
exeept by shewing, that an arlsifeeraey' is calculated to pre- 
serve the democratieal slate associations ? 

The ingenuity with which state and general will is blend- 
ed in the construction of the general government, displays 
an intention of preventing the evil of a rivalry between the 
two orders of governments ; would the introduction of an 
aristocratical order into one, have been consistent with that 
object? 

A short comparison between the aristocracies of the 
first, the second and the third ages, and ihe senate of the 
United States, will convince us, that as the senate possesses 
no quality common to these aristocracies, so a common epi- 
thet cannot be applied to both. Superstition, title and pa- 
per ; consecration, inheritance and fraud ; sacrilege, irres- 
ponsibility and stockjobbing; nnd a corporate or party 
interest feeding upon the people ; constitute the characters 
of these successive aristocracies. It cannot be imagined 
that the constitution discloses an intention of copying 
some one of those originals by neglecting to preserve a single 
feature of either in the formation of the senate. With less 
foundation still, has Mr. Adams maintained the existence of 
the aristoeratieal principle, in state senators* 



BOS THE GOOD MORAL PRINCIPLES OP THE 

If it is proved that the senate of the United States, nei- 
ther ig nor was intended to be, an aristocratieal body, but 
the representative of the political beings called states, as 
parties to the general government, upon demoeratieal, equal 
or self governing principles ; it follows, that it is organized 
upon the self same principles of equality, democracy , repre- 
sentation or self government, which pervade our whole po- 
licy. It is the representative of the moral or political beings 
called slates, as the other branch of the legislature is, of the 
people ; and it votes by the rule of majority. It is the band 
of the union by preserving equal rights to great and small 
states, as a fair government does to rich and poor men \ and 
it so far receives our eulogy. 

But so far from intending to weaken the objection against 
the long period for which its members are chosen, the con- 
siderations which entitle the senate to our approbation, sued 
new force upon it. 

If tho senate is the representative of the beings called 
states, why should it not bo at least as amenable to the will 
of its constituents, as the representatives of the people ? 
The publick good is as deeply involved in the rights of 
states, as in the rights of individuals. The states have 
been made parties to the Union by the people ; and powers 
necessary to preserve the rights with which they are intrust- 
ed for the publick good, could not have been designedly 
withheld, 

Those most strenuous for the aristocratieal complexion 
of the senate, are most deeply impressed with the fear of 
frequent elections ; and yet they are willing to allow to the 
people a frequency of election, which they deny to the state 
governments. What ! do they confess that governments 
are worse electors than the people ? Or if they deduce lh& 
supposed aristocratieal spirit of the senate, from a supposed 
aristocratieal spirit in its electors, is the danger three 
times greater from aristocratieal, than from popular elec- 
tors ? If to the simple computation of time, we add the dif- 
ference of responsibility, Jbetween a gradual and an entire 



GOVERNMENT OF THE T7. STATES. 509 

change of a representative body, the rates of confidence in 
the people, and diffidence in the state governments, as elec- 
tors, are still farther increased. It will he also seen front 
such a computation, that it is infinitely easier for the repre- 
sentatives of the states, than for those of the people, to 
betray their constituents to a consolidating principle ; 
that the responsibility of the senate to the states, t l 
the chord by which the union itself is intended to b< 
is too feeble to inflict any considerable degree of st 
upon human conduct. 

A still stronger view of this subject e&isi 
iar and the federal, are the principles of 
ernment. The federal principle is not a 
tual or moral means far' self preservation, of frequc 
tion, or of recalling its deputies, or of an entire change of 
them at one period. By weakening the means of confede- 
ration to defend itself, this chief principle in the structure 
of the general government, is particularly exposed to the 
frauds of its natural enemy, consolidation; because its 
means ox defence are merely moral, and ought of course- 
to have been at least equal to the moral means of its 
co-principle, supported by the physical force of the 
people. 

As the responsibility of their agents, is the only 
means whereby the federal parties to the government can 
enforce their will, or defend their rights, there is no dan- 
ger in making it effectual. An intellectual control over 
federal deputies, may be safely entrusted to state govern- 
ments, unarmed and influenced by the people, as the best 
mode of counteracting designs to destroy the union ; de- 
signs, which these governments will most effectually detect 
a iid defeat, 

We may take stronger ground yet. Hitherto we have 
chiefly exhibited the states and the people in a kind of con- 
trast, In order to make our reasoning understood ; but by 
forbearing the distinction, the argument becomes more for- 
rfble. The general government is the creature of the people 



510 THE GOOD MOB AX MnNCIFLF.S OF THE 

only, established to preserve their rights in their double 
capacity, as the state and federal sovereign Responsibility 
is therefore equally due to them in both these capacities. 
If ii is less in one ease than the other $ one class of rights 
are safer than the other. And if one is left to depend on 
the jualiiies of individuals, whilst the other is secured by 
placing these qualities under the discipline of the sovereign 
power, then one is hazarded upon the old principles of gov- 
ern lent, and the other- secured by the new, Is it the iiHc- 
res: the people to lose either the state ur the general 
government; or do opposite principles produce an equal de- 
gree of security ? 

The more a nation depends for its liberty on the quali- 
ties of individuals, the less likely it is to retain it. By ex- 
pecting publick good from private virtue, we expose our- 
selves to publick evil from private vices. Tl rahte 
tenure which has scourged the world, has been exchanged 
by the United States for the restraints of political I 
among which an effectual responsibility 13 the strongest. Is 
not this as necessary for men in power, called senator 
for men called representatives ? The world has been en- 
slaved by depending for liberty on the uncontrolled 
of individuals ; we have enjoyed freedom, by eontrolU?^ 
these passions. Every body makes good state govern 
where executive power is most restricted. Will the 
rights of the peopiejbe best secured, by committing them to 
the custody of the passions of such individuals, as may 
form the senate* or to an effectual responsibility to the 
guardians of the rights themselves ? To the am 
tern of confiding in human vices* or to the modern, of 
confiding in strong political law to control these vices ? 

If the moral principle of equality, was intended to exist 
among the states, an effectual mode of securing it, accords 
with this intention. Whether a seven years' independency 
of electors, secures the faithfulness of representatives to 
good, or exposes them to evil moral principles, is demon- 
strated in a branch of the British government. Are 



GOVERNMENT OF THE U. 3TATES. 511 

people of that country made free and happy by representa- 
tives, as responsible as those the states elect here ? The 
effects to be engendered here by a moral cause, such as 
exists there are there demonstrated If the degrees 
of responsibility are the same, the effects must also be the 
same ; and supposing a septennial power to change an en- 
tire chamber of representatives at one period, to be one 
year more valuable in point of responsibleness, than a sex- 
ennial power of changing it at three equidistant periods* 
these degrees are the same.- 

The opinion, « that the mode prescribed for amending 
" the constitution of the United States, does not pursue the 
" principles of democracy, self government or majority," is 
met and contested by the arguments used to explode a simi- 
lar objection to the structure of the senate, States being 
considered as entitled to equal rights, and the people of the 
United States having rights also independent of state gov- 
ernments, it was necessary to obtain the consent of all these 
rights to amendments, in pursuance of the principles said 
to be violated by the mode adopted. Amendments, inflict- 
ed by a majority of the people and a minority of states, 
or by a majority of states and a minority of people, would 
have violated the natural or political equality, either of in- 
dividuals as members of the general national society, or of 
the same individuals? as members of the state national socie- 
ties. To violate neither was the object of the constitution, 
and therefore a mode of amendment, sanctified by the eon- 
sent of a majority of both of these free, equal and indepen- 
juap parties to the union, was adopted. 

The people of the states, treated and united as indepen- 
dent of each other, surrendered a portion of their indepen- 
dent rights, into a common treasury, and retained another 
portion. The contract derives its force, not from the con- 
sent of a majority of states, but from the separate consent 
of each. If the moment the contract was signed by these 
independent parties, it had been subject to modification by 
a majority of states, the common treasury of rights, might 



512. THE GOOI* MORAL PRINCIPLES OF THE 

have been plundered ; if by a majority of people, the state 
rights retained, might have been invaded. The first would 
have erected an aristocracy, by making a majority of states 
and a minority of people, masters of the majority of the -peo- 
ple of (he United States. The second would be the case of 
a minority of the strongest men joining together after 
fo^ >iiug a society, to compel a majority of weaker men, to 
submit to such alterations as they chose to make. The 
destruction of popular government, was not the motive for 
the confederation. The federal and popular expressions 
abounding in the constitution, prove it to be a compact, both 
federal and popular, requiring the happy expedient of secur- 
ing a concurrence both of the federal and popular will, to 
amendments for self preservation ; had popular will dictat- 
ed these amendments, state self government, the federal in- 
gredient of the constitution, would have been destroyed ; and 
ha 1 federal will dictated them, national self government, 
the popular ingredient of the constitution, would have been 
also destroyed. 

But if the senate are not responsible to the publiek will 
through the medium of the states, they may defeat by less 
than a majority, the united will of three-fourths of the 
states, and a majority of the people, to amend the constitu- 
tion ; and drive them to the resource of calling a conven- 
tion ; the result of which any one state may refuse to con- 
cur in, because then each state will resume its original 
right to refuse or consent, as being independent of each other 
in negociating the terms of a new union. The concession 
by each state of this independency to three- fourths, suffices 
to shew, that a majority of states had no claim over the 
rights of each state, except from concession ; and that each 
state might annex such terms to its concession, as it pleased-, 
A power over the independence of each, is by each conced- 
ed to three- fourths. A quadruple alliance might, upon, 
the same principles, be made amendable by three of the 
parties. 



GOVERNMENT Off THE TJ. STATES, 0H 

To the exclusive power of the senate over the president, 
to its being a sublimated medium of popular will, and to 
its being the guarantee of state rights, is to be added its 
power over the concession of each state's independency to 
three-fourths of the states, as anew and weighty reason for 
its being more responsible than a British house of commons 
If an abbreviation of representative tenure, would be a whole- 
some emendation under a monarchical policy, a republican 
policy, seconded by considerations arising from the peculiar 
structure and powers of our senate, must loudly demand it*, 
By frequent election or a power of recal, publick opinion 
will be breathed into the senate, through the lungs of state 
societies ; and then publick opinion, and not the private 
opinion of thirty or forty individuals, will constitute as it 
ought and alone can, the restraint of executive power, the 
protector of state rights, and the judge of amendments to 
the constitution. These are functions belonging to nations* 
and to the discharge of which, individuals are incompetent, 
having a capacity only to convey the publick opinion, which 
is itself the real power. A body of men, upon which pub- 
lick opinion cannot effectually stamp its impress, never fail 
to pass off the false political coin of private opinion, under 
the forged name of publick. The forgery is discovered, 
and the counterfeiters are compelled to use armies, super- 
stition, penal laws, and paper corruption, to make the base 
coin pass. The publick can only become the tutelary guar- 
dian of the senate, and the senate the genuine organ of the 
publick, by means of the power and confidence which an ef- 
fectual responsibility to the nation, through its state sec- 
tion s> will create. 



£3 



z±x 



SECTION THE SEVENTH 



AUTHORITY 



L/'on-fid-encb is a substitution of the understanding' sli^I 
honesty of others for our own ; authority? the understand- 
ing and honesty so substituted. Whether this substitution 
belongs to the good or to the evil class of moral principles, 
is the same question in another shape, with the controversy 
for preference between the policy of the United States, and 
that of vvevy other country. Monarchy, aristocaey, hierar- 
chy, privileged orders, and all parties and factions, political 
or religious, being founded upon the substitution of the un- 
derstanding and honesty of others for our own ; and the 
policy of the United States, upon the use of one's own un- 
derstanding and honesty. 

From the fact, that the inducements of nations to de- 
fraud or enslave individuals, are infinitely fewer than those 
of individuals to defraud or enslave nations, our policy has 
inferred, that the judgement and honesty of a nation, is 
more likely to produce its own liberty and happiness, than 
any other judgement or Lonely which can be substituted 
ftr it either of a king, an . patriot, a party, a dema- 

gogue or a faction, A: ' :rts the contrary. 

Authority is subject to fraud and errour-; national 
judgement, to eri'our on!v Rations have no motive for de- 

ing or injuring themselves ; authority, so many for de- 
ceiving or injuring nations, that it seldom or never fails to 
do both. A nation never knowiugly adopts or adheres to an 
oppressive measure; autSority is so entirely addicted to 
this vice, that it is constantly ks original design, or final ef- 
fort ; and the ftrsl prete-a&ioa to tho dictatorship it usurps* 



AUTHORITY. H§ 

is an advertisement that it is already a knave, or will finally 
become a tyrant. 

If authority should miraculously possess integrity, St h 
more liable to capricious errours and absurd prejudices, 
than national judgement. The wisest man is never free 
from these humiliations of human vaniCy, but he can never 
convince the majority of a nation, that his humours are 
wise. National opinion shields mankind against the afllic* 
tions arising from individual caprice and prejudice, tc 
which authority exposes them ; and therefore it is a wiser* 
besides being an honester standard of truth. 

We may without much difficulty discover our own opi- 
nion, but not one in a thousand can possibly know the opinion 
of the authority in which he confides. Like a river, it 
commences in a diminutive rill, which is swelled in its 
course by innumerable turbid and ivisfrseous additions, until 
not a rop of the original fountain, can be obtained ; whilst 
confidence must still swallow the contaminating compound, 
and allow its impurities to he transubstantiated into holy 
water. The supposed fountain is even often quite ihy j 
and a river wholly deeeptious is'forineit!, without containing 
a single drop from itiv source it claims, to raise an artificial 
current, for conveying, not the nation, hut den s or 

knaves, into a good harbour. Jt is not therefore matter of 
any astonishment, that most publick measures derived from 
authority, end in repentance. 

Wherever authority guides a nation or a political party, 
there cannot be a national or party principle, opinion or 
measure. It converts nations into the engines of an aspire 
ing individual or a faction, for enslaving themselves ; and 
parties into beasts, to be ridden by a few artful men into 
office. To this surrender of national and party principles 
and opinions to authority, is to be superadded, the stupi- 
dity of corrupting the object of confidence itself, by assur- 
ing it of indiscriminate support. Propelled by this pre- 
posterous admonition towards its natural bent, authority 
Tery soon abolishes the distinction between principles* 



ties are converted into mere ladders to power, and election 
is restricted to the barren right of saying which ladder shall 
be mounted ; so as to produce, not a check, but an excite* 
ment of the authority to make the most of present power*. 
Authority moulds men into the same kind of moral beings* 
whether it is bestowed by a free or an oppressed nation, by 
a patriotick or a slavish party, because the same moral 
effects proceed from the same moral causes ; and hence* 
however derived, its apprehensions of the alternation to 
which it is exposed by election, produce to confiding nations 
the same misfortunes* 

All the truth in the opinion " that knowledge is the 
best security for liberty," lies within its capacity to detect 
the fraud of authority, and to retain the contrary principle* 
self government. Our policy draws the liberty we enjoy 
from one principle ; authority is the source of the present 
state of other countries* The comparison would at once 
awaken the credulity, by which nations are induced quietly 
to put on the yoke of authority, were they not perplexed by 
its false and constant claims to national gratitude* Would 
to God some standard could be established to detect the 
fraud of magnifying publick services, up to the value of na- 
tional liberty. When were those rendered by George, 
Washington exceeded by any individual ? Yet if the publick 
services of all other citizens during the same period, were 
poised against his, the disparity would satisfy every future 
patriot, that he ought to submit to an example, which gra- 
duates the highest publick services, by a scale, far short 
of justifying bad precedents and sacrifices injurious to na- 
tions; 

Authority is similar to monarchy or aristocracy, in pre* 
ferring the abilities and interest of one or a few, to the abi- 
lities and interest of all, as the ground work of government* 
It is similar to an elective monarchy or aristocracy, in being 
the creature of national or party confidence. But it is 
more pernicious to good government than elective monar 
Stay or aristocracy* in being more mortal $ it cannot outlive 



AUTHORITY* $1& 

the man to whom it is attached, and may die before him, 
The struggle to depose and transfer it is so perpetual, that 
an interval of repose can seldom occur ; and the permanent 
State of a nation guided by it, resembles the temporary state 
of an elective monarchy at the epoch of election. Succes- 
sions of authority, like the waves of a troubled ocean, perpe- 
tually roll along over each other, and the instant one is bu- 
ried, another rushes into its place, and speedily follows on 
to the grave. The excessive mortality of authority demon- 
strates its incompetency for the government of a being, 
which seldom or never dies. The longevity of a principle, 
ought to be equal to whatever is entrusted to its care. Can 
a living nation secure its liberty and prosperity by confiding 
it to a perishing authority ? The vital defect of hereditary 
monarchy, is the mortality which exposes nations to the 
fluctuations in the characters of men, and deprives them of 
the benefit of unchangeable principles ; and the vital reme- 
dy for this defect, is still more adverse to the greater degree 
of fluctuation in the principle of suecessional authori- 
ty. It lies in fixed good moral principles, and genuine 
self government, capable of living as long as the nation*, 
and wisely confiding for happiness in that which can live 
as long as itself* 

Tiie whole moral world cannot afford so perfect a coin- 
cidence of phenomena, for ascertaining the true value of 
any moral principle, as in the case of authority. Csesar y 
Cromwell and Bonaparte obtained degrees of democratick 
authority, never reached by others. The parties which 
bestowed them, by substituting confidence for judgement 
and conscience, were of the highest democratick orders,, 
and proved to be the completest instruments for tyranny. 
The whig and tory parties of England in possession of 
authority* uniformly pursue the same measures ; and un- 
possessed of it, uniformly avow patriotick opinions, for the 
sake of obtaining an opportunity to violate them. The le 
publican and federal parties of the United States, are evi- 
dently clambering towards the system for consigning a 



516 AUTHORITY. 

nation to the constant spoliation of a successive authority* 
more aggravating to vicious passions, because more unset- 
tled than monarchy itself. 

Far from correcting the abuses with which they charge 
each other, their leaders, trusting to the pernicious doc* 
trine of confidence and authority, will convert their mutual 
abuses into mutual precedents. Neither parties nor indi- 
viduals will voluntarily diminish power in their own hands, 
however pernicious they have declared it to be in the hands 
of others, because if they are vicious, they are willing to 
abuse it, if virtuous, they presumptuously confide in their 
own moderation ; therefore abuses can never be corrected, 
where confidence and authority have subverted national 
principles. 

As authority generates the same effects upon all men, 
the men are not blameable, because it is obvious from the 
constancy of the effects, that the force of authority is irre- 
sistible by human nature. If a physician mingles poison 
with wholesome food, not he who is -poisoned, but the physi- 
cian who poisons him, deserves punishment. If a nation 
poisons parties or individuals, or its own government, with 
confidence and authority, the nation which applies the poi- 
son, and not those who cannot avoid its effects, is blameable t, 
and therefore the moral law is strictly just, which recom- 
penses with arbitrary sway, those poisoned by confidence, 
and punishes the poisoners themselves with slavery. The 
same inexorable moral law brings similar private guilt or 
folly to due expiation. Individuals, like nations, who substi- 
tute in the management of their servants, confidence and au- 
thority for an inquisitive scrutiny and a strict responsibility, 
are exposed to pillages, which justly transfer their estates 
to those whom they have thus corrupted. 

As the guilt of nations in betraying posterity to oppres- 
sion by yielding to authority, is inevitably punished by their 
own subjugation, the severity of this punishment constitute* 
a proof of the badness of the* principle, satisfactory to all 
who believe in a superintending providence. Parties who 



AUTHORITY. 517 

Corrupt their leaders and subject themselves by the same 
evil principle, are punished with still greater severity. Like 
herds of swine, they are fed with grain or garbage, until 
they are fit for slaughter ; this is never deferred a moment 
after the conjuncture is ripe, lest they should escape ; aid 
without remorse, they are always put to death bytthe tyrants 
of their own creation. Thus the great demoeratick leaders* 
Caesar, Cromwell and Bonaparte, dispensed justice to their 
stupid parties. Caesar, a courtier, originally raised them 
for their end. Cromwell, a fanatick, was stubbornly honest, 
but authority melted that honesty, because human nature 
cannot resist the moral law which imposes new opinions 
with new circumstances ; and he served the party he ador- 
ed, as Caesar served the party he despised. Bonaparte, ori- 
ginally neither a statesman nor a fanatick, happening to 
float upon accident up to a momentary authority, demon- 
strated by the use he made of an unpromising conjuncture* 
how fatal a heedless though trivial confidence may be, to the 
nations and parties by whom it is bestowed. 

It is wonderful that the human mind should have been 
able to detect the impostures founded in the authority of 
Gods, and remain blind to those founded in thQ authority 
of men ; that it should despise oracles pretending to inspira- 
tion, and surrender its judgement and conscience to autho- 
rity pretending to none s and that it should worship dying 
men, after having ceased to worship living spirits. An hun- 
dred volumes might be filled with the fatal effects to nations 
and parties, in ancient and modern times, from sacrificing 
their own principles, consciences, judgements and interests* 
to authority ; but leaving them to the recollection of the 
reader, we will proceed to quote a few cases to shew the in- 
fluence of circumstances upon the soundest heads and the 
purest hearts ; those best grounds for any pretensions which 
authority can advance. 

Almost every eminent man who has appeared in gov* 
ernments tinctured with liberty, might be quoted as an au- 
thority against the opinions by which he was raised; but the 



51 6 AUTHORITY, 

habit of setting out with free and proceeding to slavish 
principles, is so common, that a contrary case, rare, if not 
singular, is first exhibited to the reader. Dean Swift, in 
his prime, was a tory, a statesman, a priest of the high 
church party, and a violent opponent of the whig principles. 
In his retirement, uninfluenced by amhkion, this profound 
politician sent to his friend an abstract of his political opi- 
nions, to be found in Pope's works, vol. 6. p. 120, which is 
transcribed as an evidence, both of the force of passions and 
circumstances upon our current opinions, and of a concur- 
rence between this able man when uninfluenced by these 
passions and circu instances, and several important doctrines 
of these essays. 

" I had," says Swift, " a mortal antipathy against stand- 
*' ing armies in times of peace; because I always took stand- 
w ing armies to he only servants hired by the master of the fa- 
< ( mily for keeping his own children in slavery; and because I 
« conceived that a prince who would not think himself secure 
" without mercenary troops, must needs have a separate 
ft interest from that of his subjects. Although I am not ig- 
4S norant of those arbitrary necessities which a corrupted 
w ministry can create, for keeping forces to support a fae* 
" tion against the publick interest." 

« As to parliaments, I adored the wisdom of that Go 
« thick institution, which made them annual; and I was con- 
H fident our liberty could never be placed upon a firm foun- 
f* dation until that ancient law was restored among us. For 
»« who sees not, that when such assemblies are permitted 
" to have a longer duration, there grows up a commerce 
" of corruption between the ministry and the deputies, 
* wherein they both find their accounts, or to the mani- 
ff fest danger of liberty ? Which traffick would neither 
Jf answer the design nor expense, if parliaments met 
*« once a year." 

«* I ever abominated that scheme of politicks (now 
u about thirty years old) of setting up a monied interest m 
"* opposition to the landed. For I conceived, there could 



jLtJTHORITY* £19 

«* not be a truer maxim in our government than this, that 
« the possessors of the soil arc the best judges of what is for 
ii the advantage of the kingdom. If others had thought the 
" same way, funds of credit and South Sea projects would 

* neither have been felt nor heard of." 

Further to illustrate the force of passions and circum- 
stances upon curreut opinions, and to recommend the work 
of an author of no fame, by exhibiting its co&currenee with 
one other of high reputation, the following dissertation.* the 
original of which is now before me, written by Mr. John 
Adams during the revolutionary war, is exhibited to the 
reader. As correct extracts not taken from this copy have 
occasionally appeared in the news papers, its diffusion as a 
model for government, is a proof both of care in the compo- 
sition, and of its great credit with the author and the pa- 
triots of those times. 

" If I was possessed of abilities equal to the great task 
« you have imposed upon me, which is to sketch out the 
46 outlines of a constitution for a colony, I should think my- 
" self the happiest of men, in complying with your desire : 
" because, as politicks is the art of securing human bappi- 
" ness, and the prosperity of societies depends upon the con- 
" stitution of government under which they live ; there 
*< cannot be a more agreeable employment to a benevo- 
« lent mind than the study of the best kinds of govern- 
< 6 ment. 

« It has been the will of heaven, that we should be throwo 
*f into existence at a period, when the greatest philosophers 

* and lawgivers of antiquity would have wished to have liv- 
" ed ; a period, when a coincidence of circumstances, with- 
" out example, has aiforded to thirteen colonies at once an 
" opportunity of beginning government anew from the 
" foundation, and building as they choose. How few of the 
" human race have ever had any opportunity of choosing 
« a system of government for themselves and their children? 
: < Howfeiv have ever had any thing more if choice in govern- 
f* mmt than in climate! These colonies have now their elec- 

67 



620 4ITTHORIT?, 

" tion, and it is much to be wished that it may not prove t© 
" be like a prize in the hands of a man who has no heartf 
w to improve it." 

« In order to determine which is the best form of gov- 
s' eminent, it is necessary to determine what is the end of 
" government. And I suppose that in this enlightened age, 
" there will be no dispute., in speculation, that the happi- 
*' ness of the people, the great end of man, is the end 
if of government, and therefore that form of government 
5 * which will produce the greatest quantity of happiness i$ 

" All sober inquirers after truth, ancient and modern* 
si divines, moralists and philosophers, have agreed that th© 
u happiness of mankind, as well as the real dignity of human 
** nature, consists in virtue ; if there is a form of govern- 
" ment whose principle and foundation is virtue, will not 
" every wise man acknowledge it more likely to promote 
H the general happiness than any other ?" 

I( Fear, which is said hy Montesquieu and other politi- 
<f cal writers, to be the foundation of some governments* 
" is so sordid and brutal a passion, that it cannot pro~ 
i( perly be called a principle, and will hardly be thought io 
"America a proper basis of government." 

" Honour, is a principle which ought to be sacred : But 
" the Grecians and Romans, pagan as well as christian, will 
" inform us, that honour at most is but a part of virtue, and 
** therefore a feeble basis of government." 

" A man must be indifferent to sneer and ridicule, m 
** some companies, to mention the names of Sidney, Har- 
■* rington, Locke, Milton, Nedham, Neville, Burnet, Hoad- 
" ly; for the lines of John Milton, in one of his sonnets, will 
** bear an application? even in this country, upoa some 
s * occasions* 

«' I did but teach the age to quit their c!ogg* t 
(i By the plain rules of ancient liberty, 
M When lo ! a barbarous noise surrounded mft 
H Of owls and cuckoos, aisei, apct and dogs. 



« These great writers, however, will convince any man who 
w has the fortitude to read them, that all good government is 
« republican ; that the only valuable part of the British con» 
" stituthn is so ; for the true idea of a republick is, an em- 
" pire of laws, and not of men ; and therefore as a republick 
« is the best of governments, so that particular combination 
« of power, which is beet contrived for a faithful exe 
« cution of the laws, is the best of republicks," 

" There is a great variety of republicks, because the 

* arrangements of the power§ of society are capable of ma- 
"ny variations.'* 

« As a good government is an empire of laws, the lint 
" question is, how shall the laws be made ?" 

** In a community consisting of large numbers, inhabit- 

* ing an extensive country, it is not possible that the ivhoU 

* should assemble, to make laws. The most natural substU 
" tutefor an assembly of the whole, is a delegation of power •, 
" from the many, to a few of the most wise and virtuous, 
i( In the first place then establish rules for the choice of 
»* representatives : agree upon the number of persons who 
¥ shall have the privilege of choosing one. Jls the repre* 
" sentative assembly should be an exact portrait, in mima» 
« ture, of the people at large, as it should think, feel, reascn 
** and act like them, great care should be taken in the for- 
*< mation of it, to prevent unfair, partial and corrupt elec- 
w tions. That it may be the interest of this assembly to do 
*< equal right and strict justice, upon ail occasie'tis, it 
" should be an equal representation of their eoristitu- 
" ents, or in other words equal interests among the peo- 
" pie, should have equal interests in the representative 
« body." 

"That the representatives may often mix with the ir 
" constituents,, and frequently render them an account cT 

* their stewardship, elections ought to be frequent," 

'• Like bubbles on the sea of matter borne 
M They rise, they break and to Uiat §e* retunV. 



B2& AtrTHORlTY, 

« Tliese elections may be septennial or triennial, but for 
if. iny own part I think they ought to be annual, for there 
I s is not in all science a maxim more infallible than this 9 
"where annual elections end, there slavery begins" 

« But all necessary regulations for the method of consti- 
<* tilting this assembly, may be better made in times of more 
« quiet than the present, and they will suggest themselves 
" naturally, when the powers of government shall he in the 
" hands of the people's friends. For the present it will be 
«< safest to go on in the usual way." 

« But we have as yet advanced only one step in the for- 
« mation of a government. Having obtained a representa- 
" tive assembly, what is to be done next ? Shall we 
fi leave all the powers of government to this assembly ? 
*f Shall they make and execute, and interpret laws too ? 
« I answer no ; a people cannot be long free, and never 
<* can be happy whose laws are made, executed and in- 
«« terpreted by one assembly. My reasons for this opi- 
4i nion are these.' 5 

« «J single assembly is liable to all the vices, follies and 
* frailties of an individual. Subject to fits of humour, 
"transports of passion, partialities of prejudice $ and from 
« these and other causes, apt to make hasty results and 
" absurd judgements : all which errours ought to be cor- 
" reeled, and inconveniencies guarded against by some con- 
4i trolling power." 

" A single assembly is apt to grow avaricious, and in 
« time would not scruple to exempt itself from burdens 
« which it would lay upon its constituents, without sym~ 
" pathy." 

" A single assembly will become ambitious, and after 
i6 some time will vote itself perpetual. This was found in 
H the case of the long parliament : but more remarkably 
" in the case of Holland, whose assembly first voted that 
« they should hold their seats for seven years, then for life, 
" and after some time, that they would fill up vacancies as 
<* they should happen, without applying to their constituents 
« at all," 



AUTHORITY S£S 

« The executive power cannot be well managed by are- 

* preventative assembly, for want of two essential qualities* 
« secrecy and dispatch." 

* 4 Such an assembly is still less qualified to exercise the- 
*< judicial power, because it is too numerous, too slow, and 
* 6 generally too little skilled in the laws." 

«• But shall the whole legislative power be left in the 
" bands of such an assembly I The three first at least of t\w> 
« foregoing reasons, will shew that the legislative power 
« ought not to be wholly intrusted to one assembly." 

** Let the representative body then elect, from among 
" themselves or their constituents, or both, a distinct 
«* assembly, which we will call a council. It may consist 
«« of any number you please, say twenty or thirty. To 

* this assembly should be given a free and independent 
" exercise of its judgement, upon all acts of legislation, 
" that it may be able to check and correct the errours of 
« the other." 

" Hut there ought to be a third branch of the legisla- 
" ture : and wherever the executive power of the state is 
« placed, there the third branch of the legislature ought to 
« be found." 

* L^t tJie two houses then by joint ballot choose a gover- 
« nour. Let him be chosen annually. Divest him of most of 
" those badges of shivery called prerogatives. And give 
« him a negative upon the legislature. This I know is lia- 
" ble to some objections, to obviate which, you may make 
" him in a legislative capacity only president of the council, 
" But if he is annually elective, you need not scruple to give 
" him a free and independent exercise of his judgement, for 
" he will have so great an affection for the people, the re~ 
" presentatives and council, that be would seldom exer- 
« cise this right, except in eases, the publick utility of 

* which would soon be manifest, and some such cases would 
« happen." 

" In the present exigency of American affairs, when by 

* an act of parliament we are put out of the royal protection. 



5£* AtfTKOBXTY, 

" and consequently discharged from all obligations of all©- 
« giance ; and when it has become necessary to assume go- 
« yernments for immediate security, the governour, lieute- 
Si nant-governour, secretary, treasurer and attorney gene* 
« ral should be chosen by joint ballot of both houses." 

" The governour, by and with and not without the advice 
" and consent of council, should appoint all judges, justices 
" and all other officers, civil and military, who should have) 
" commissions signed by the governour and under the seal of 
4i the colony.** 

" Sheriffs should be chosen by the freeholders of the 
«* counties. If you choose to have a government more po- 
« pular, all officers may be chosen by one house of assembly 
« subject to the negative of the other.'* 

" The stability of government, in all its branches, the 
« morals of the people, and every other blessing of society, 
" and social institutions, depend so much upon an able an$ 
" impartial administration of justice, that the judicial power 
« should be separated from the legislative and executive, and 
*' independent upon both ; the judges should be men of ex- 
«« perience in the laws, of exemplary morals, invincible pa- 
«« tience, unruffled calmness, and indefatigable application $ 
" their minds should net be distracted with complicated 
"jarring interests | they should not be dependent on any 
" man or body of men : they should lean to none, be subser- 
" vient to none, nor more complaisant to one than another. 
*< To this end they should hold estates for life in their offices, 
" or in other words their commissions should be during good 
" behaviour, and their salaries ascertained and established 
" by law.'* 

" If accused of misbehaviour by the representative bo- 
" dy, before the governour and council, and if found guilty 
" after having an opportunity to make their defence, 
€i they should be removed from their offices and sub- 
"jected to such other punishment as their offences de 
w serve," 



AtfTHOSUTIf* 525 

** Jl rotation of offices in the legislative and executive 
«< departments has many advocates, and, if practicable, 
" might have many good effects. A law may be made that no 
" man shall begovernour, lieutenant- governour, secretary,, 
'* treasurer, counsellor, or representative, more than three 

* years at a time, nor be again eligible until after an inter- 
« val of three years." 

« A constitution like this, of which the foregoing is a 
*< very imperfect plan, naturally introduces general know- 
«f ledge into the community, and inspires the people with a 
*< conscious dignity becoming freemen. A general desire of 
" reputation and importance among their neighbours, which 
" cannot be obtained without some government of their pas- 
" sions, some good humour, good manners and good mor- 
« als, takes place in the minds of men, and naturally causes 

* general virtue and civility. That pride which is intro*. 

* duced by such a government among the people, makes 
4i them brave and enterprizing. That ambition which is in» 
" troduced into every rank, makes them sober, industrious 
*' and frugal. You will find among them some elegance* 
*< but more solidity, a little politeness, but a great deal of 

* civility, some pleasure, but much business." 

" Let commissions run thus, « Colony of North Caroli* 
** na, to A. B. greeting, &c* and be tested by the gov* 
*t era our." ^ 

« Let writs run « The Colony of &c. to the sheriff &e." 

" Let indictments conclude « against the peace of the 
« Colony of North Carolina, and the dignity of the same* 
** or if you please « against the peace of the thirteen united 
H colonies." 

" We have heard much of a continental constitution. I 
4i see no occasion for any but a Congress. Let that he made 
u an equal and fair representative of the colonies, and let 
** its authority be confined to three eases, war, trade and con- 
" troversies between colony and colony. If a confederation 
" was formed, agreed on in Congress, and ratified by the as- 
9 semblies; these colonies, under such forms of govern- 



B26 £TTTHOKITY. 

« ( merit and such a confederation, would he unconquerable by 
** all the monarchies of Europe," 

" This plan of a government for a colony, Vou see is in- 
" tended as a temporary expedient under tlie present pres- 
« sure of affairs, The government once formed, and having 
*' settled its authority, will have leisure enough to make any 
** alterations that time and experience, and more mature 
« deliberation, may dictate. Particularly, a plan may he 
" devised, perhaps, and he thought expedient, for giving 
" the choice f the jovervour to the people at large, and of 
** the q&urisellorS:%o the freeholders of the counties. But he 
ese things as they may, two things are indisj ensahly 
« to he adhered to; one, is some regulation for securing for- 
" ever an equitable choice of representatives ; another, 
*« is the education of youth both in literature and morals." 

« I wish, my dear sir, that 1 had time to think of these 
** things more at leisure, and to write more correctly* But 
66 you must take these hints rough as they run. Your own 
« reflections, assisted by the patriots of North Carolina, will 
*< improve upon every part ot then*." 

« As you brought upon yourself tlie trouble of read- 
*< log these crude thoughts, you can't blame your friend." 

Principles and convictions are expressed in this disser- 
tation, in ideas and language, as strong, as plain, and un- 
doubtedly as honest, as in the hook of the same author upon 
the same subject ; his mind must have attained to its matu- 
rity at the time of the first composition ; and the force of 
the difference between a struggle for liberty, and an enjoy- 
ment of a rich executive office, only remains to account for 
the different appearance of the same principles and the same 
words to the same mind, at different times. A few remarks 
will sufficiently display this difference. 

In the dissertation, the sovereignty of the people is une- 
quivocally asserted, as the basis of society and civil power. 
Representation is made its substitute, from the impossibi- 
lity of holding national assemblies. And being drawn from 
this origin, its perfeotion is made to consist in thinking* 



AtfTHOKITYo bttif 

feeling, reasoning and acting like, and being an exact por* 
*rait in miniature, of the people at large. 

Mr. Adams's inter system is bottomed upon orders, two 
of them hereditary, incapable of thinking, feeling, reason- 
ing or acting like the people at large ; and yet exercising a 
complete sovereignty, as in England. 

The dissertation contends for the frequency of election* 
its application even to executive power, for securing its 
responsibility ; and the infallible truth of the maxim, that 
* i where annual elections end, there slavery begins." 

The system renounces two thirds of the principle of 
election for hereditary orders, and advocates the idea of un- 
elected virtual representatives, never to mix with the people, 
account for their stewardship, or be, 

" Like bubbles on the ssa of matter borne, 
" To rise, to break, and to that sea return.** 

And asserts that elections ought to be rare ; that they 
produce every vice | and that they bring the worst men in- 
to power. 

Both in the dissertation and the system, the impolicy of 
accumulating all civil power in one assembly is justly insist- 
ed on. In the first, election is considered as sufficient to 
produce a division of power ; and the people, as being able 
to split their agencies, and not compelled to consolidate 
them iato one mass. In the second, hereditary orders are 
eulogized as the only remedy for such a political evil. The 
argument used against a single assembly is, that " it is lia- 
ble to all the vices, follies and frailties of an individual." 
Or, in other words, like a king. Then a king or an indivi- 
dual must be liable to all the " vices, follies and frailties" of 
a single assembly. Mr. Adams was forced to use one of 
these political beings, as a mirror to reflect the defor- 
mity of the other. But forgetting their similitude, he 
becomes in his system the admirer of that, selected in 
his dissertation to exhibit a single assembly in an exe- 
crable light. 

68 



b%% JrtTT'HORlTI, 

The dissertation urges an annual election of an execu- 
tive or goveruour, as the means of securing his f* affeetiou 
for the people, the representatives and the council." The 
system recommends an hereditary executive or a king, as 
the means for securing his affection for the people. One re- 
commends a rotation in offices ; the other that they should 
be for life and inheritable. 

The dissertation asserts, that the constitution itproposes f 
would introduce knowledge, inspire the people with dignity, 
good humour, good morals, good manners, virtue and civili- 
ty ; that it would make them brave and enterprising, sober? 
industrious and frugal ; and that if a confederation was 
formed only for the cases of war, trade and controver- 
sies between the colonies, they would, under such forms 
of government, be unconquerable by all the monarchies of 
Europe. 

/The system transfers these eulogies to the English form 
of government ; a'Jd recommends that monarchy, as parti- 
cularly well contrived for war, although it was one of the 
European group of monarchies, defied by the dissertation; 
with an unarmed American democracy^ not containing one* 
twentieth of their number. 

In advocating the doctrine of compounding a govern 
xnent with orders, Mr. Adams has omitted to consider the 
moral principles of such forms. Except that he insists up- 
on the evil principle, jealousy, as an effect of these forms, 
likely to produce harmony and peace. The moral princi- 
ples, (fear and corruption, are not more sordid, base and 
brutal, than jealousy between political orders. Fear, cor- 
ruption and jealousy, are essential principles of every here- 
ditary system, past and present. In his dissertation, Mr. 
Adams indignantly rejects the idea of founding a govern- 
ment in a principle, sordid, base and brutal, and considers 
virtue as the i6 principle and foundation of government most 
likely to promote general happiness." 

Two ideas are suggested by his considering virtue as a 
principle of government. One, as requiring a virtuous 



AXTTHOKITT* B%S 

nation.; the other, as only requiring a virtuous government; 
or one founded in good moral principles. The former idea 
is most common ; the latter, most correct. The principles 
of a society may be virtuous, though the individuals compos* 
ing it are vicious. Vicious beings may severally wish for 
security against vicious beings, and this can only be obtained 
hy good moral principles. The moral being called gov- 
ernment, is instituted to restrain the vices of man, as a 
moral being also. Its morals must be more perfect than 
the morals of man, or it can never make him better. And 
although man is its author, yet an author can compose 
a better system, of morality, than his own example ex- 
hibits. 

At this era of the world, avarice is man's predominant 
-ice. It can only be gratified at the cost of man, and of the 
major number of men. These majorities have aa interest 
and a power to defend themselves against it, by virtuous, just 
or equal principles of government ; and societies composed 
of avaricious members must be founded in these principles; 
to afford the utmost gratification to the avarice of the ma- 
jority, because it cannot gain so mucfy by unjust laws lot 
pillaging a minority, as by just laws for suppressing pillage. 
In all partnerships for gain, banking or commercial, care 
is taken to prevent one or a few of the members, from grati 
fying their avarice at the expense of the rest* Avarice pro 
pels the partners towards this precaution. The same prin- 
ciple, the same interest, and the same motive, propels mv 
tions to save their liberty and property from ambition and 
avarice. By the cases quoted, we see that an avaricious 
society can form a government able to defend itself against 
the avarice of its members. It requires such a government 
more than a benevolent society. Thus men can form a gov 
ernment, able to restrain the vices of man. The more vici- 
ous he is, the more he needs a virtuous government. Cities 
being more vicious than the country, require a more virtu 
ous form of government. Accordingly, they are generally 
obliged to ask, and monarchy to grant, charters for civil 



53Q jjjth&kity, 

government, founded in republican principles y because the 
necessity for a good government, becomes more urgent as the 
people become more vicious ; just as the worse the partners* 
the better must be the articles. 

It is a consolation to observe, as a vicious majority can 
only defend itself against vicious minorities, by founding 
society or government in good, just and equal moral princi- 
ples, that the interest of vice is enlisted on the side of vir- 
tue % and suggests the establishment of such forms of gov 
ernment, as will produce a benign influence on private iao- 
rals. It would be as foolish in a national majority, to ena- 
ble one or a few of the members to defraud or oppress the 
others, as in a banking or commercial majority. 

Mr. Adams, in the dissertation we have copied, by con- 
trasting virtue and fear, as principles of the moral being 
called government, discloses a correspondence with the doc- 
trine of this essay ; which is, that a government and its 
laws, ought to be founded in good moral principles, to ad- 
yancethe interest of a vast majority of mankind, however 
vicious they may be. 

If virtue, as a basis of government, be understood to 
mean, not that the principles of the government, but that 
the individuals composing the nation must be virtuous, then 
republicks would be founded in the sell* same principle with 
monarchies, namely, the evanescent qualities of individuals. 
But interest is a better and more permanent basis. Its won- 
derful capacity for concretion bestows on noble orders, hie 
rarchies and stockjobbers, power for oppression, and ioy 
alty to each other in defrauding ; and why may it not alss 
secure the fidelity of nations to themselves, though composed 
of people equally as vicious ? Mankind being now too wise 
to suffer governments, founded in superstition or fraud, to 
go on undetected, must either submit to an armed force able 
to defy knowledge and protect guilt, and become less free 
as they grow more wise ; or use their knowledge, to disco- 
ver and secure their interest. Because the speculations of 
errour, and the tongue of flattery, have assigned to repub 



AT7THeRIT*. bbl 

lick 9, the virtue of the people, and to moDitrehies, honour, 
as necessary principles ; are we to believe that tyranny 
causes the human mind to sparkle with more brilliant ho- 
nour tuan freedom ; and that freedom teaches the catalogue 
of humble and meek virtues resulting from oppression, bet 
ter thai tyranny ? Or surmounting an authority, overturned 
by every day's experience, conclude, that bad men may take 
care of their interest as well as good men, make as good 
Social bargains, and as successfully apply virtuous principles 
to forms of gover ment. 

Mr. Adams's expression is, * that virtue must be the 
principle of a republican government/' Of the government, 
not of those who live under the government. Be n eaup 
that the government must be constituted upon virtuous or 
just principles, and not upon fraudulent or unjust. In con 
formity with this idea, in his dissertation, he calls executive 
prerogatives ** badges of slavery f and yet by his system 
he considers them as bulwarks to defend the people. 

In his dissertation, Mr. Adams utters a penegyriek upon 
several authors, who had written against the English mo- 
narchy. He pronounces with asperity the full competency 
of those writers to convince any man, « that all good gov- 
ernment is republican ;" and he removes every doubt, as to 
the sense in which he uses the term, by observing, " that 
the only good part of the British constitution is republican." 
And yet a great portion of one volume of Mr. Adams's 
work, is dedicated to the refutation of Nedham, one of the 
eulogized authors, in language nearly as rough, as that ap- 
plied in the dissertation, to those who would not be made re- 
publicans by Nedham's arguments. In defence of his dis 
sertation, Mr. Adams relies upon Nedham ; in defence of 
his later system, he endeavours to confute him. In his dis 
sertation, he deduces a form of government from NedhamV 
position « that the people were the best guardians of their 
own liberties ;" in his book, from the position, " that the 
people are their own worst enemies/* 



53& itfJTHOBIT¥r 

Mr. Adams y s idea of judicial power, as expressed in the 
dissertation, accords with the principles of this essay. The 
judges, says he, *f should not be dependent on any man or 
body of men ; they should lean to none, be subservient to 
none." For this end, he proposes to give them commis- 
sions during good behaviour, and to subject them to the 
judgement of one branch of the legislature, on the accusa- 
tion of another. 

We agree in the utility of judicial independence and impar- 
tiality. The independence meant by Mr. Adams, and by all 
other politicians, in speaking of judicial departments, never 
refers to a sovereign power, but to a man or body of men, 
clothed with some political function. The end of judicial 
independence, is to shield the judges against the influence 
of the creatures of the sovereignty, and the sovereignty 
against the evils of this influence, and not to supersede the 
sovereignty itself by one of its creatures. Not partiality to 
a nation, but to a faction or an individual, is the evil to be 
prevented by judicial independence. 

As partiality to a nation, on the part of judges, is not 
tho evil ; independence of the nation, is not the remedy* 
The evil, partiality, and the remedy, independence, both re- 
fer to delegated power, and not to national sovereignty ; and 
are converted, by transferring their allusion to wrong ob- 
jects, into a political caricature. Judges, independent of 
nations, lest they should be partial to delegated power ; and 
subject to the appointment, patronage and removal of dele- 
gated power, lest they should betray nations ! 

Upon this ground, it, has been urged, tliat judicial inde- 
pendence of a nation, will not shield judges against partial- 
ity for a man or body of men in power, or against becom- 
ing instruments of usurpation in the hands of governments ; 
and that trial by impeachment, was not calculated to sup- 
press the passions of men, to ensure an impartial judge- 
ment, or to allay in the minds of judges every apprehension 
of a man or body of men. 



AUTHORITY, 5&$ 

Chi the contrary, it was contended that a judicial respon- 
sibility to the nation, could only obtain forjudges, indepen- 
dence of a man or body of men clothed with power. And 
that the want of publiok confidence, naturally attending 
a»i absence of responsibility, with executive appointment, 
p • imotion and patronage, and legislative accusation and 
, would produce the dependence and partiality, dt pre* 
eatod by Mr. Adams, and too often displayed by expe- 
rience. It is in the mode only of obtaining the same end^, 
xhat the dissertation differs from this essay. 

After all it is admitted, that Mr. Adams's change of 
opinion, can have no influence upon the argunvn*, except to 
remove the obstacle of his authority, against an impartial 
consideration of the question. It was a weight too heavy 
for a subordinate rate of talents to bear, and therefore re- 
course was had to a powerful auxiliary. 

But facts are not altered by a change of political opi- 
nion. They continue immutable. Those asserted in his dis- 
sertation by Mr. Adams, are as true now as they were then j 
and they were then true, or he would not have asserted them. 
As they cannot be retracted, one, subversive of the ground 
work of his reasoning in favour of orders, is a fair and pow- 
erful argument. 

" How few (says he) of the human race, have ever 
" had any thing more of choice in government than In 
" climate." 

If this forcible exclamation is true, as it undoubtedly is, 
H follows, that few governments, if any, except those of the 
United States, have been the result of national will and intel- 
lect ; and that his mountain of quotation cannot be appli- 
cable to our governments, which were produced by national 
will or intellect. 

A transition by the United States, from force, fraud or 
accident, to human will and intellect, as the source of gov* 
ernment, was the event which justified Mr; Adams in ap- 
plying the terms " enlightened age" to the era of our revo- 
fotion; and in felicitating himself upon cxiiting, at th& 



1:3% AtJTHOKIT¥c 

period « when'the greatest philosophers and lawgivers of an* 
Siquity would have wished to have lived." Had they risea 
from their graves at that time, they would have joined their 
labours to his, in drawing government from this new source; 
*t !east it was this unprecedented event which caused Mr. 
Adams to think, that the sages of antiquity would, if they 
could, have lived altogether in the United States, at the era 
^f the revolution. 

Bat if they could now rise from their graves, hew sore* 
ly would they feel the mortification of finding, that Mr. 
Adams himself ha 1 given up national opinion as a source of 
government; and had gone back in search of political im- 
provement to forms, with which it had as little to do, as with 
climate ? 

The discovery, that the moral effects of accident, fraud 
and force, were better than the moral effects of man's free 
intellectual powers, would either have exceedingly humiliat- 
ed these sages, or they would have denied the fact, and have 
placed before the United States a picture of all the govern- 
ments, not the result of free intellect, to compare with the 
►only government which is so. 

Orders would he the most prominent feature in the whole 
of these arbitrary or accidental governments; and no in- 
stance would appear of their having ever been created by free 
national intellect. Mankind have been scourged for ages 
by these self created beings ; the UnitecJ States have prefer- 
red free will and intellect to this scourge ; and the question 
is, whether they will revolt from their own understandings, 
for the sake of having as little choice in their government 
as in their climate. 

If the circle of ages has exhibited all polished nations, 
except one, without choice as to their forms of government ; 
and if most, or all of these disinherited nations, contained no- 
ble or separate orders ; can time make stronger the evi- 
dence, to prove, that these orders were in reality the usurp- 
ers of the birthright belonging to nations, and that the soli^ 
tary nation, so fortunate as to preserve It, owes its prospe- 
rity to their absence I 



ATJTHORITT. <gS5 

It thence follows with a degree of certainty, seldom at? 
tainable in argument, that the United States, once seduced 
into the establishment of a limited monarchy, or a monar- 
chical republick ; or suffering a paper order or interest 
to acquire an influence over their governments ; would, 
thereafter, like other nations, find government as impe- 
rious as climate, and never more exercise a right of 
choice. 

Although Mr. Adams's dissertation is replete with sen- 
timents adverse to his system of orders, and concurring 
with the principles of this essay, one more only will be par- 
ticularly quoted. 

America, says he, has been favoured by heaven with, 
the power of choosing,, changing and building government 
from the foundation; and in this enlightened age the hap- 
piness of the people is allowed to be the end of gov- 
ernment. 

If this power is really a favour from heaven, it would 
be no proof of the wisdom or piety of the present age to re- 
turn it to the state of abeyance, in which it resided, until 
the United States obtained the possession and benefit of it, 
A successful vindication of the right to draw government 
from the sources of intellect and will, is the proof adduced 
by Mr. Adams -of the light of the present age 5 remnants 
of feudal darkness will obscure this light ; because it is im- 
possible for a nation divided and distracted, !>y orders, 
peaceably and deliberately to make, mend, destroy and re- 
new forms of government, as intellect and will may dictate. 
And if Mr. Adams's rapture and adoration were proper, in 
contemplating the blessing of self government, so new and 
wonderful that he ascribes it to the immediate interposition 
of heaven, ought the present generation to conclude their 
thanksgiving, by requesting the deity to resume his bene- 
faction ? 

The next instance of the force of circumstances on the 
human mind, to which we will advert, for the sake of ascer- 
taining the value of authority and the folly of confidence, 



556 AUTHORITY. 

results from a short comparison between an address to the 
people, gratuitously proposed by Mr. Jay whilst president 
of Congress, on the 15th of September, 1779, and una- 
nimously adopted by that body, with a passage in the 
Federalist or Puhlius, a book partly ascribed to this gen* 
tleman. 

The indignation against the British form of government, 
and the ardent affection for ours, which the first breathes, 
are not considered as of much weight, except to pFove that 
their principles were different ; because, although Mr* 
Jay's conviction at the time is evinced by his resorting to 
the deity as a witness of it, yet conviction may be certainly 
raised and lowered by zeal, as well as by circumstances. 

Without availing ourselves therefore of Mr. Jay's elo-> 
quenee, we shall only draw out of it a few cool opinions 
and simple facts. He considers " equal liberty as our priu- 
" ciple of government, our rulers as the servants and not 
" the masters of the people, and our governments as founded 
" in freedom ; the British monarchy as crumbling into 
K pieces, the parliament as venal, the country as oppressed, 
« the people as destitute of publick virtue, and the govern- 
" ment as violating the rights of mankind." And after 
contrasting the English and American forms of government, 
in his forcible style, he emphatically concludes, that one is 
the tyrant, the other, the servant of the people. It was the 
object of the address, to inspire the United States, by this 
fact, with perseverance in the prosecution of the war« 
Therefore, both Mr. Jay and the Congress must have disa- 
greed with Mr. Adams, in the similiarity between the two 
forms, for which he so laboriously contends ; or in hie 
opinion, that the people addressed were enlightened. 

The Federalist contains an eulogy of the English form 
of government, infinitely transcending the compliment paid 
to it by Mr. Adams, and incapable of augmentation. Mr. 
Adams's similitude between ship-building or navigation, and 
this complicated moral machine, allowed to it only a com- 
parative degree of excellence, which might have hem 



AUTHORITY. 537 

Extended by substituting a watch, or at least a spinning 
machine moved by fire, as the object of comparison. But 
the Federalist, by an ingenious use of Montesquieu, exalts 
it to the station among governments which Homer occupies 
among poets. 

If the invective in Mr. Jay's address, and the eulogy in 
the Federalist, flowed from the same pen, the subjection of 
the human mind, in its highest perfection, and utmost 
maturity, to circumstances, is here again demonstrated ; 
and in this demonstration, is exhibited the folly of expect- 
ing to find a steady patriot in a slave to uncontrollable 
events. 

The same book has furnished us with the finest defini- 
tion of that species of patriotism, imbibed or bestowed by 
confidence and authority. The allegiance of its supposed 
authors to its tenets was destroyed by circumstances, upon 
the very heels of promulgation ; and thej arranged them- 
selves in political opposition, whilst their tenets, through the 
blind submission of confidence, and the despotick power of 
authority, acquired the singular felicity of maintaining an 
orthodoxy with hostile parties ; each of which assailed their 
antagonists from the same quiver, and as ardently believed 
in their own patriotism, as inimical fanaticks who are the 
dupes of leaders, do in their own sanctity. 

Though integrity, talents and elegance of style, were 
unable for a moment to retain, against the force of new cir- 
cumstances, the adherence of only three political doctors 
to their own prescription 5 yet fidelity to our constitution 
was mutually allowed by opposite parties to this fortunate 
composition ; each only claiming for itself an adherence 
to the constitution and its paraphrase, and charging its 
antagonist with a violation of both. Either this fidelity or 
one of these accusations are necessarily unfounded ; yet 
confidence has hitherto been unable to discern its errour. 

To me, this authority for opposite principles, appears to 
be planted in the ancient analysis of governments, to be 
neatly cultivated with the English doctrine of checks and 



BBS AUTHORITY. 

balances, and to be highly adorned with all the comely the©* 
ries of limited monarchy, invented between the accession of 
Charles I* and the death of William of Orange ; but 
never actually practised ; theories, indebted to the corrup- 
tion by which they are defeated, foi- the false evidence of 
their supposed operation. Like a foreign silk, embroidered 
with flowers of gold and silver, its splendour on one side 
conceals the defects of its workmanship; and its insufficien- 
cy for use and comfort, as well as its hidden deformities, 
can only be discovered by adverting to the other. The Eng- 
lish writers during the specified period, contain whatever is 
to be found in the Federalist ; but all their theories'sunk, as 
soon as they were promulgated, in a vortex of corruption : 
and the nation has drawn from them an overwhelming addi- 
tion -to its burdens. What is to keep the same doctrines 
from the same fate, or^shield the United States under their 
guidance, from the same effects ? Our genuine native policy, 
being woven with strong homespun threads of plain princi- 
ples, undarned by a fragile foreign glossy manufacture, more 
likely to ruin than to improve its texture, exposes us to none 
of those calamities drawn by England from a system, resort- 
ed to by the Federalist for the explanation of this policy. By 
its capacity of operating without the help of bribery and cor- 
ruption, it discloses its radical difference from a system, so 
universally allowed ..to require such assistance, as to have 
inspired its votaries with a notion, that this bribery and 
corruption constituted its chief excellence ; in truth, there 
lies no medium between this opinion and a surrender of the 
system itself. To avoid a dilemma so unpromising, the wide 
difference between a derivation from fixed moral principles* 
or from fluctuating mixtures of monarchical, aristoeraticai 
and democratical orders or powers, is contended for through- 
out this essay. 

The truths, with which the book Ave are speaking of 
abounds, have probably so far covered the errour of deriving 
the general constitution, from the idea of the old analysis> 
commingled in imitation of the English system, as to have 



-iOEITX. 

infused some drops of this foreign poison into the fatvs of the 
United States. It considers a constitution as defective! 
where the whole power is lodged in the 1 hands of the people! 
or their representatives .* It represents the British stand- 
lag arm} as .« tnniess.f It calls a distinction between a con- 
fedeeaey ;,ud a consolidation of the states •< more subtle 
than, accurate."! It asserts that English liberty by the re 
volution of 1*388 was " completely t.'iumphaut."§ It inge- 
niously defends mercenary armies,** and it declares " that 
in the usual progress of things, the necessities of -a nation 
in every stctge of its existence, will be found at least equal to 
its resourees."ff These, and a multitude of similar doctrines, 
swailowed by both the parties which h ave divided the na- 
tion between them, in the sweet but poisonous pill of confi- 
dence, must necessarily have bestowed upon legislation; a 
tone not perfectly in unison with Hie genuine policy of the 
United States. What, for instance, could a nation sulTer, or 
tyranny extort, between an eternal payment and dispensa- 
tion of resources equal to its ability ? 

It was unfortunate that so great a mass of seal, integ- 
rity and talents, should have been expended at the juncture 
of a controversy, calculated rather to inspire the ingenuity 
necessary to win a victory, than the cool inquiries neces- 
sary to discover truth ; and that party collisions should sub- 
sequently have deprived it of the liberty of applying to this 
controversial composition, the test of a candid revision. I 
believe that one of the supposed authors at least does not ap- 
prove of ail its doctrines : and the occasion which produced 
them having passed, neither the feelings of its authors, nor 
the gratitude and applause of the public!;, ought to undergo 
any change, from an effort to preserve the policy of the 
United States, which this book so eminently contributed to 
introduce ; suggested by a conviction, that however it may 
abound, like Mr. Adams's, with republican principles, these, 

• No. 8, p. 43 ! No. 9, p. 51. * No, 11, p. 65, 67.— No, \ 
% No. 29, p. 187, ** No. 47, p. 97, ft Vol '.\ No. 41, p. iO. 
• edition, 17 c '9 



64S AUTHORITY.. 

mingled up with the principles of the British form of gov^ 
ernmeiil . 9 constitute such a picture of our policy, as Chris- 
tian pre< cepts mingled with the fictions of Mahomet, do of 
Christia nity. 

The safest repository of the authority created by politi- 
cal eonfi dence, would be a philosopher, abstracted from the 
influeno* 3 of station, of party, of avarice, and of ambition. 
But eve< i this rare character, seduced by genius, excited by 
a love oJ f literary fame, or inebriated by hypothesis, is often 
the autl lor of splendid errours, destined, however they may 
be adm ired by a taste for elegant composition, to be detect- 
ed by Q4 >mmon sense. If the scrutiny and wisdom of pub- 
lick opi nion is necessary to restrain the honest flights of 
imagim ition, can its application to the corrupt artifices of 
self iutj erest, and the stubborn prejudices of station and pow- 
er, be j safely dispensed with ? If the general good sense, is 
necesy? iry to correct disinterested individual caprieiousuess, 
can tli is unhappy quality be sanctified by an union with irre- 
sistihl e temptations ? 

Gi 3d win and Malthus, philosophers of talents, accom- 
plishifl jents and integrity, unsurpassed by any of their con- 
tempi jraries, supply us with illustrations of this best title to 
politi eal confidence and authority. 

f >odwin, by equalising both knowledge and property, 
prop -OSes to remove every obstruction to population ; and 
Mai thus domonstrates that this effect would destroy the de- 
sign I of Godwin's system. And from this demonstration he 
dra - ws the conclusion, that population can only be kept within 
the capacity of the earth to feed it, by positive laws or by 
mis ery. These are probably among the best written books 
whiten have ever appeared, and both authors retain the fair- 
est reputations ; yet one is a text book for mobs, and the 
otl ler for tyrants. Both the systems of these adversaries, 
an 5 built upon fragments of human nature. Godwin's, on 
its good moral qualities, exclusive of its evil $ Malthus's, on 
a single animal quality, exclusive both of its other animal 
qn :aiities, and of all its moral qualities. 



AUTHORITY. 54i 

The arguments used by Malthus to destroy Goi Jwin often 
recoil upon himself. Your moral system, as we both con- 
fess, says Malthus, will place human nature in j * state ex- 
tremely favourable to population. Wherefore ? 1 tecause po- 
pulation is regulated, as Godwin contends, by mc >ral causes. 
If this unqualified admission destroys Godwin, it must also 
destroy a system built upon the contrary idea, that human 
population is regulated by food. By your div ision of pro- 
perty and knowledge, says Malthus, you will Remove want 
and misery, the cheeks upon population, w IWoh must of 
course become redundant, because these checks* a ire removed* 
But I propose to remove want and misery by a law to pre- 
vent procreation. Well, does not the redundant I population 
as certainly 'follow, whether want and misery a ire removed 
in the mode of Godwin or of Malthus ? 

It is true that Malthus, aware of the objecti ion, whilst 
he allows to man's moral nature a great influ enee upon 
population to destroy Godwin, so blends this admiission with 
the entire dependence of population on food, as j to support 
the latter idea throughout his book. And as <|me system 
considers mind as the despot of matter, the other 
matter as the despot of mind Whereas the fa 
with or without civil government, population has i sever been 
able to overtake the capacity of the earth to yie |ld subsist- 
ence ; and therefore it is probable, that ail the op< ^rations of 
food and population, or of mind and matter, upon < inch other, 
are regulated by some unalterable natural lav/. At both 
extremities of man's moral state, the urban and t jjhe savage* 
we find its traces. Rather an excess than a wa ,nt of food, 
is generally met with in cities ; and where a wai it of food k 
produced by a savage state, it is never owing to i? jq incapaci- 
ty of the country to produce it. The checks uj ;>on popula- 
tion in both states are therefore moral. & mntries, ia 
which a few savages starve for want of food, a fiord abun- 
dance for an hundred fold population, of a diffi jrent mora? 
skaracter, as has been demonstrated in North £ wmeriea. 



■ considers 
et is, that 



£jb$ AUTHORITY. 

The cases of a rapid population after plagues, are weaker 
than those of a rapid population, after the expulsion of sa* 
vages, by all the difference between gaining the posses- 
sion of an improved and an unimproved country. Both cases 
are regulated by the different moral impressions of wea'tit 
and poyertj; u : >o*i human nature. A colony from London, 
settling in America on its first discovery, and the remnant 
of a plague, would both lose and acquire many moral quali- 
ties deeply affecting population ; and in both eases the moral 
character which excites the population, flows from a multi- 
tude of causes Independent of food. If there are human si- 
tuations hich suspend the moral qualities calculated to im- 
pede population, and others which awaken them : and if a 
certain degree of populousnessnevev fails to awaken them; 
then population being graduated by a natural moral law, 
there is no need. of the artificial laws proposed by Mai thus 
to check it ; nor any grounds for an apprehension that God- 
win's system could have overturned this natural law. It 
could o dy come at it by affecting several imposibilities ; 
Malthas, alarmed, brings into the field a new impossi- 
bility to ai'rest a foe who can never appear. Godwin pro 
poses to equalise wealth and knowledge among all men ; 
Malthus to equalise food and procreation almost as exten- 
sively ; and Mr. Adams to equalise wealth and power be- 
tween three political orders, Thus we see at one view three 
great authorities, agreeing in principle, at war in fact, and 
each proposing to effect similar impossibilities. One offers 
to root out self love and all evil human qualities, and to 
plant equal and universal knowledge and benevolence where 
where they grow. Another offers to control the least gov- 
ernable human passion at the most inauspicious epoch ; 
and the third offers to maintain an equality of wealth and 
power between jealous rival parties. It is as practicable 
for mankind to change, as to suspend their nature for twen- 
ty years. The human qualities proposed by Malthas to be 
subdued, are undoubtedly as unconquerable, as those pro- 
posed by Godwin to be subdued. Indeed, these authors 



AfcTHOHITT, £VS 

K5em to agree that they are more so. Godwin, by relying 
on reason for suppressing selfishness ; Malthus, by resorting 
to law for suppressing love. 

It is more likely that man's errours should overlook na* 
ture's powers, than that his wisdom should outstrip her 
foresight. All her resources are not explored, and it as* 
sails a sound maxim, to expect the invention before the ne- 
cessity. The recent use of cotton, improves upon wool 
in economy, far beyond the improvement of wool upon 
skins. And until we see the improvements of agriculture 
exhausted by population, a system of inexorable oppression 
to prevent men from starving, will by its elegance, only 
more forcibly display the insecurity of resting upon au- 
thority. 

This authority bursts upon the poor of England with a> 
new oppression. To the system for distributing wealth and 
poverty by law, an exclusion of those to whom the latter 
is assigned, from the pleasures of relationship, friendship 
and love, lest they should be starved by this artificial po- 
verty, is an admonition, both of the end to which that sys- 
tem leads, and of the coldness with which even philosophy 
can look upon such an end. The more eminent a political 
authority becomes, the more awfully it operates as an ad- 
monition. Malthus teaches us, that iha English system of 
distributing wealth and property, m modes which the 
United States have began to imitate, instead of leaving 
that distribution to industry, will devote one part of a com- 
munity to death by famine, or to the necessity of living 
above half their lives, without affections and without 
mind. 

The creation of a poor class by law, and a refusal 
of alms from law, to prevent a redundant population, 
would very forcibly illustrate the difference in point of 
benevolence, between indirect slavery to a separate inte- 
rest, and direct slavery to an absolute master. 

The terror of a plethora of population, and the hope of 
obtaining wealth by a plethora of paper stock, concur in 

70 



H-fc it THORITE 

defrauding man of his liberty and property, By the first* 
he is represented as sailing in an ocean of atmosphere, with 
a limited stock of food on board, and he is told that noth- 
ing can save him from famine, but a power in a few of 
the crew, to regulate the births and deaths. The second 
asserts, that the same minority, by modifications of raga 
and ink, can multiply wealth or the means of supplying 
his wants, without limitation. It happens, not unfre- 
quently, that the same individual believes, both that th© 
earth is inadequate to the production of bread sufficient 
to meet population, and that paper can produce endless 
wealth. As if nature had forgotten to provide subsist- 
ence for her creature, man ; and remembered to provide it 
for his creature paper stock. Nature] who like the 
fates, is ever spinning and cutting, whose business is pro- 
duction and destruction, and who has worked equally 
hitherto, with both her hands. 

The first of these chimerical systems, by infusing 
a feverish zeal for educating a whole nation, has rather 
checked than encouraged the progress of knowledge. 
Projects for turning ail men into philosophers, advance 
knowledge, as those for turning all metals into gold, ad- 
vance wealth. Godwin's system is an enchantress ; Mai 
thus's, a gorgon. But it is equal to mankind, whether 
they are enticed into ignorance and slavery by the cap- 
tivating imagination of equalising knowledge and pro- 
perty, or terrified into it, by the dread of a redundant 
population. 

A theory built upon the whole, and not upon a part 
only, of man's moral character, can constitute a real 
foundation for a government ; just as earth, hot vapour, 
must be a foundation for a bouse, Mr. Godwin deserts 
the practicable remedies of division of power and respon- 
sibility, by which the evil portion of man's nature may be 
controlled, for the impracticable idea of rendering this 
control unnecessary, by changing that portion of his na- 
ture, Mr. Adams insists, that this portion of the humat 



AUTHOiUTT. bit 

character will forever adhere to man; but rejecting, with 
Mr. Godwin, the use of a division of power and respon- 
sibility for its control, be proposes a balance of wealth 
and power, among inflamed orders. And Mr. MaithuE 
founds his moral theory upon a single physical quality, 
to regulate which, a stronger government would be ne- 
cessary, than any which has yet appeared. He proposes 
to introduce the papistical system of celibacy, without 
the wealth or the concubinage, by which it was made 
practicable. 

Mr. Godwin's and Mr. Adams's systems have yet a 
further resemblance to each other. The first author pro 
poses to render responsibility for restraining the evil por- 
tion of human nature unnecessary, by curing selfishness 
with a balance of knowledge and property among men. 
The second, to render it unnecessary, by curing selfishness 
with a balance of wealth and power among orders. One 
nostrum, is a cure for all mankind ; the other, for the 
few composing governments. The only difference be- 
tween them is, that one balance has never succeeded, and 
the other has never been tried. Our policy, differing from 
the projects of curing all men of the evil qualities of hu- 
man nature, by a balance of property and knowledge, ae 
cording to one philosopher » or of curing only governing 
men of these evil qualities, by a balance of wealth and po\y. 
er among orders, according to the other,, proposes to 
subject this bad portion of human nature to a strict disci- 
pline, by civil and political law ; or a cede of lav s-, able to 
reach the delinquencies of those imperfect beings who gov- 
ern, as well as the delinquencies of those who are gov- 
erned. Godwin's system proposes to render accountable- 
ness unnecessary, Mr. Adams's applies it partially, ours uni- 
versally. They resemble religious systems, declaring that 
all men, a few, or none, ought to be exempted from the 
sanctions of religion. Our policy is bottomed upon the old 
idea that men had two souls, one good the other had. Mr 
Adams's, uposj the idea of forming a government of three 



£46 AUTHORITY*. 

souls, all had, as being inspired with jealousy and hatred 
against each other. If one good and one bad soul make 
a being, requiring all the varieties of legal and political res- 
ponsibility, what is to be expected of a being compounded 
of three bad souls, without any responsibility ? Or how 
can the favourers of the system of balances justly ridicule 
Godwin, on account of his project for casting out man's 
bad soul by reason, when they propose to neutralise or 
destroy the good one by hereditary power and jealous 
orders ? 

Mr. Adams, in availing himself of the authority of 
Aristotle, as being " full of the balances,'* furnishes u? 
with another illustration of the subject we are discussing. 

That ancient philosopher assigned the legislative power 
to the people at large ; the executive, to the magistrates; 
and the judicative, to the tribunals of justice. These 
magistrates and judges were to be appointed by the 
people. This species of mixt government, he supposes 
to be adapted for one eity ; and he adds, that the gov 
eminent of an agricultural people, ought on the other 
liand to be popular. 

The inconclusiveness of these ideas is obvious. They 
propose that magistrates should be magistrates ; and 
judges, judges. They suppose a more popular govern- 
ment, than one wherein the whole people legislate and ap- 
point ail publick officers : and they are destitute of any 
artiiieial arrangement of power, either by balancing co-or- 
dinate bodies of men, subjecting all publick officers to na- 
tional control and sovereignty, or dividing it into manage 
able sections. 

The idea of a political trinity, coequal, could never have 
entered into the head of Aristotle, because his magistrates, 
being elective, were not eo-eternai with the people ; and 
ei ng artificial, the architect might demolish as well as 
build. He would as soon have imagined, when a statuary 
had finished three statues, that these statues naturally 
swallowed up the statuary, as when a nation had created 



AUTHORITY. £W 

three criers of power, that these order© naturally swallow- 
ed up the nation. 

Aristotle, being ignorant of Mr. Adams's idea of mak- 
ing a government out of three repellant principles, or coin 
pressing three such principles into an unity (a doctrine 
infinitely more miraculous than an unity among three ho. 
mogeheous principles,) literally states the sovereignty oi' 
the people, as the source, creator and master of every 
species of check and balance, capable of being extracted 
from his garbled sentences by amplifying construction. 

The gravity with which this authority is urged by a 
gentleman of Mr. Adams's erudition, shews the rashness 
of confidence, and the following quotation will fix its value, 
Aristotle's Rheiorick contains this passage. ** Minerva 
« preferred Ulysses; Theseus, Helena; Alexander was pre- 
*' ferred by tSse Goddesses, and Achilles by Homer. II 
** Theseus did no injury, neither Alexander. And if the 
4i Tyndaridss, neither Alexander. And if Hector equalled 
*« Patrocius, Alexander equalled Achilles. There are per- 
f* sons against whom no judgement is to be given, as prin- 
46 ces." The Goddesses were the virtues, supposed by the 
mythology of the times, to be the makers of Gods. 

Authority is frequently corrupted by a subjection to au- 
thority, and the influence of Alexander must have operated 
as strongly upon Aristotle in favour of monarchy, as that 
of a wealthy and powerful banking aristocracy all around 
him, undoubtedly did upon Adam Smith. These ingenious 
men, in labouring both to satisfy the mandates of authority* 
and to save their own opinions, have spread obscurity and 
indecision over the latter, as the plainest declaration of war, 
upon which a philosopher could adventure, against the mili- 
tary conqueror of ignorant nations, or the paper conquer- 
or of an enlightened people. Could influence re-absorb 
what it has infused into the writings of these great men, 
one would probably appear to be an enemy to monarchy 
and the other to aristocratical establishments, in all their 
forms, Aristotle himself says, " those who are, constrained , 



t&8 AX THOBlTf* 

speak far more untruths than truths.'* And he countenan- 
ces our conjecture, by a definition of law, in which, distil 
guishing between common law and prescribed law ; mean- 
ing by the first natural justice, and by the other human in- 
stitution | he defines the latter to be « the common con- 
sent of a city,'' instead of referring to monarchy? or a 
sovereignty of balanced orders, as its source. And (agree- 
ing with Mr. Adams in the dissertation we have transcrib- 
ed) he says, ** For thus the people being able to confer ho- 
** nour on whom they please, will not envy those who re 
* s ceive it ;• and eminent men will exercise probity and sin- 
" eerity, to gain the esteem of the people." The people, not 
privileged orders, are to draw eminent qualities from emi- 
nent men* How ? By election and responsibility, or by 
rejecting the government of authority, and exercising self 
government A monarchy made out of Aristotle, as girls 
make a peacock by patching together shreds of silk, iu the. 
face of his unequivocal preference of a popular government 
for an agricultural people* would be a perfect emblem of 
authority t 

Religion or patriotism by deputy, is the cause of the er- 
rours and mischiefs of both ; and parties or individuals, pre-^ 
tending to be pious or patriotiek, because they believe 
another to be so, are universally knaves or fools. The most 
ignorant, unenslaved by authority, discerns goodness by the 
light of his conscience, and distinguishes between an easy 
and a hard govern nient^ by the light of his senses. But au- 
thority, by depriving us of conscience and sensation in reli- 
gion and government, causes such calamities as are encoun- 
tered by a blind man who is a lunatick. It assures us that 
human reason can neither select a religion nor a govern- 
ment, for the sake cf making & tyrant of this very reason. 
It confines us to revelation and to nature, as the authors of 
Its dogmas, but refuses to our human reason a capacity to 
construe either, that it may construe both by its human 
reason, to enslave and defraud ours. And being in its own 
essence a ty cant, its followers* whether prompted by knar- 



AUTHORITY* 5§9 

$h zeai or pious folly, are as really the slaves and instru- 
ments of tyranny, and will as certainly degenerate into the 
vices and baseness of slavery, as the followers of Peter the 
hermit, or of Bonaparte the conqueror. Parties are un- 
warily admitted to be natural and wholesome to republieks, 
though republicks are constantly destroyed by parties. 
Without the debasements of confidence, and the frauds of 
authority, their existence would be seldom felt, and the 
slavery they draw upon nations, would be never suifered. 

If men will plant liberty in individual imperfection and 
mutability, instead of planting it in the permanency and 
perfection of principles, it must perish. The tools of 
patriots frequently become the authors of more evils, than 
the slaves of tyrants. A republican government cannot 
live upon monarchical diet Free governments are des- 
troyed by confidence and authority. Can a more dan- 
gerous habit befal the people or parties of the United 
States, than one which is the constant prelude of slavery ? 

We have suifered authority to call forth in self de- 
fence her stoutest champions. She has summoned to her 
assistance, an orator, a saint and a hero ; the English and 
American parties of whig and tory, federalist and republi- 
can ; and six philosophers of unsurpassed integrity and tal- 
ents. Yet these formidable auxiliaries only serve to rivet 
the conclusion, that the common sense and common ho- 
nesty of a nation, is both a wiser and honester source of 
government than the authority of samts, kings, philoso- 
phers, heroes, orators, parties, factions or separate inte- 
rests in any form. Nor do I know a maxim, the belief 
of which would be a better security for liberty, than that 
no nation can long preserve a free government, if it i$ 
guided by the caprices or frauds of authority in the 
enumerated shapes or in any others ; nor can it he en- 
slaved, except by commuting national understanding 
and honesty for a dependence upon this humour some, 
fickle, selfish, ambitious* and dishonest moral beingo 



f *S« j 



SECTION THE EIGHTH: 



HE MODE OF INFUSING ARISTOCRACY INTO 
THE POLICY OF THE UNITED STATES, 



Among civilized people, no species of tyranny can exist, 
without the help of aristocracy $ because intricacy must 
keep pace with knowledge, to conceal or defend oppression* 
to which no nation ever submits knowingly and willingly. 
The weakness of simple monarchy is so extremely visible, 
that upon tlie first emergence of a nation from profound ig- 
norance, it is compelled to call in the help of aristocracy » 
It has never been able to find any other ally, because it can 
have no common social interest; and being therefore forced 
to purchase allies with property and privileges taken from 
the rest of a nation, these allies must of course be ariito- 
cracies in fact, under whatever form they are reared. Aris- 
tocracy existed without monarchy, in Greece, Rome and Ve- 
nice, by the help of superstition, bravery and a complication 
of contrivances ; but at present, it appears every where, 
though in different shapes, as the engine of monarchy, be- 
cause of certain changes in man's moral character. In 
France and Turkey it is military ; in Spain it is made of a 
superstition so powerful, as to have exposed the nation to 
the loss of its independence, foif the shadow of monarchy ; 
in China, it is made of superstition, civil privileges and mi- 
litary power ; and in England of paper stock, military pow- 
er and patronage. Aristocracy is no where agrarian. And 
wherever it has taken deep root in any form, an agricultu- 
ral interest has ceased to be kssown or even spoken of, a? 
having any influence in the government. 



THE MODE OF IXFUSING ARISTOCRACY, &C. 551 

Whenever the lands of a country are so divided, as that 
the weight of a few landholders is not perceivable in the 
government ,• or so that the majority of the nation belong 
to the agrarian interest ; no species of aristocracy, partak- 
ing in the least degree of a landed interest, can possibly be 
introduced. 

Minority is an ingredient, without which no aristocracy 
can exist. A feudal king and his barons, possessed of nearly 
all the lands of a country, were a minority, constituting a 
landed aristocracy, living upon the rest of a nation. But 
this species of aristocracy being destroyed in England by a 
division of lands (though individual landed fortunes there, 
still greatly exceed any here) a new species of aristocracy 
became necessary to sustain monarchy in that country, in 
which a landed interest has been so far from keeping an as- 
cendancy, that it has been unable to get a just share of repre* 
sentation. 

The crown, aided by the remnant of the feudal aristo- 
cracy, after contending against the principles of civil liber* 
ty, introduced by the Puritans into the English policy, 
being defeated, abandoned this prop of monarchy in that 
form; and revived it in the form of paper stock and corrup- 
tion, so as to have undermined all the fortresses erected 
against its power, and made itself stronger than it was before 
h was reduced. 

A minority capable of subsisting upon a majority, being 
an essential quality of aristocracy, the landed interest of the 
United States, so far from being susceptible of any portion 
of aristocratiek power, is precisely that interest which must 
inevitably furnish subsistence and privileges for an aristo- 
cracy here in any form; because it is a majority, and incapa- 
ble of subsisting upon any other interest. 

The fcetus of aristocracy here, can therefore only con- 
sist of the same qualities, which have grown up into a giant 
in Britain. These are paper stock, armies and patronage. 
The question is, whether the landed interest of the United 
States, as it cannot constitute an aristocratiek order bpiweer 

71 



552 THE MODE OF INFUSING A11I9TOCEACY 

a king and the people, had not better unite with the other ~ 
popular interests, to strangle in its cradle any infant visibly 
resembling this terrible giant ? 

The modern species of aristocracy neither wants nor 
fears titles. In their absence or presence, in France and 
in England, its operation on the side of executive power, is 
the same. It can operate in the United States, as it does in 
France, without titled orders ; and Mr. Adams's project of 
the balances is unable to prevent it from operating, as it 
doe3 in England with them. A didactlek aristoeratical body. 
is no check, without solid power. If the power is derived 
from representation and responsibility, it is not aristoerati- 
cal; if from corruption and patronage, it is the tool of a 
monarch. And a naked constitutional precept would be as 
strong a check upon actual power, as a naked didactick aris- 
tocracy. A French senate, an English house of lords, and 
the conscript fathers under the Roman emperors, are exam- 
ples of these assertions. These examples display the just- 
ness of Lord Shaftsbury's and Mr. Adams's opinion, 
as to the necessity of a balance of property among orders, 
to enable one order to balance another in power. The no- 
bility in England can no longer balance the crown, because 
its property is lost. The senate in France cannot balance 
the emperor, for want of wealth. The Roman emperors 
succeeded the conscript fathers as plunderers of the provin- 
ces. It results, that a noble order here, could not balance 
executive power or the people, unless endowed with the 
same ingredient. Money and arms are the instruments of 
power, Mr. Adams's system, without its means or princi- 
ples, could never work according to his hopes. Its essen- 
tial principle or means is, that the noble order must be en- 
dowed with wealth. Mr. Adams ought to have told us 
from whom this wealth is to be taken, and of what it is to 
consist. 

Let us suppose that it is to consist of land, for the sake. 
of flattering the erronr of some landholders in the United 
Sjf&tes. who conceive thai their interest leans towards aj) 



INTO THE POXICY OF TlIIj 17. STATES, SZo 

aristocracy. It will require one third ©f the lands of the 
IT lion, to give a landed aristocracy weight or power suffi- 
cient to answer its purpose. Suppose also, that the zeal of 
landed men in favour of a landed aristocracy* should induce 
them to part willingly with one-third of their lands to ob- 
tain it, and consider what retribution would be marie for the 
sacrifice. 

The late a ris toe radical order of Franee was a landed 
one. It derived its power from possessing a third of the 
s. And it used this power to shelter its own lands from 
taxation, and to shift the publick burdens from its own 
shoulders, upon those of the vest of the people. Even a 
landed aristocracy must possess the essential quality of feed- 
ing upon all except itself. Besides, every landholder, in 
nurturing the errour that his interest leans towards a land- 
ed aristocracy, has many computations to mtike; such as, 
whether if is likely that all considerable, landholders will he 
made lords: or in ease of a selection of two or three hundred 
individuals to constitute a noble landed order, whether it h 
likely that he will be one. Whether such a body am be 
any thing hut the infamous instrument of a tyrant, unless it 
! .lowed with sufficient property to give It weight : and 
he is willing to give up one-third of his lands for 
purpose. 

If it would be improvident in the landed interest of the 
United States, to part with one-third only of its lands, to 
gain the beneiit of an aristocracy capable of some agrarian 
sympathy, what must be the foresight of mortgaging the 
whole,, to rear up an aristocracy of stock corruption and pa- 
tronage, capable of none? England answers ih^ question, 
But undeterred by her cries to forbear, the landed interest 
of the United States, with exclusive skill or folly, is mould- 
ing heavy ordnance to play upon itself, and whittling down 
its own arms into pocket pistols. Perpetuity and primoge- 
niture arc its heaviest artillery against stork monopoly, 
With these, the English landed interest has fallen before it . 
the American, without either, provokes the *um!m». 



&5± 



THE MODE OF INFUSING ARISTOCltACY 



The landed interest of England foresaw its disaster, and fell 
against its will. The singular management has been re- 
served for the landed interest of America, of cherishing 
contrary principles, both tending towards its own subjuga- 
tion ; one, a division of lands ; the other, an increase of 
stock, armies and patronage. And whilst it would grudge 
one-third of its lands to create a sympathizing aristocracy, it 
subjects the whole to be for ever fleeced by law, without 
stint, to create an inexorable one. 

The favourers of monarchy, are so entirely convinced 
of the ineffieacy of a didaetiek king or nobility, that they 
will never attempt to introduce either. They will make 
these orders with solid aad not with imaginary materials. 
With wealth, armies and patronage. These are the trees. 
which, when planted and suffered to grow, will produce the 
fruit of course. They are exceedingly difficult to eradi- 
cate, after they begin to bear. And when mature, upon 
touching the bud, the fruit bursts forth in its highest 
flavour. 

The policy of the United States must see, and not wink 
upon this reasoning, if it expects to last. The landed inte 
rest being incapable of becoming an aristocracy itself, must 
unite with the other natural interests of society in main- 
taining a republican government, or submit to an aristocra- 
tical monarchy of which it cannot constitute a part. It ean 
possess no essential weight or power, except under a form 
of government which shall exclude orders, because it can- 
not become an order itself ; and because it must pay and 
not receive the corruption, found by experience in Eng- 
land, necessary to keep a government of orders together. 
It is yet able to make a master for itself in any shape it 
may fancy ; or to pluck the mask from the Proteus, aris- 
tocracy, whether it lurks under a coronet, a mitre or paper 
stock. 

It is hidden so artfully under the last, that it is hard to 
exhibit it in bodily shape. No escutcheon is hung out. No 
«nsigns are unfurled to mark its march and its victory. And 



INTO THE POLICY OF THE U. STATES. 555 

We must resort to Mr. Adams's book to nod a badge, designa- 
ting stoek aristocracy with as much correctness, as a crown 
designates a king. 

This badge he affixes to it in the following maxim : 
u Money, which all people now desire, and which makes the 
« essential instrument for governing the world.''* By 
bestowing on a banking interest " the essential instrument 
for governing the world," you enable it to govern. Every 
separate interest, able to govern, does govern. And every 
separate governing interest, being a minority, must also be 
an aristocracy. 

Let the landed interest compare Mr. Adams's maxim 
and his system with each other, and it will see the force of 
this reasoning, and his inconsistency in proposing to make 
orders by conventions, in the face of his own maxim. "What 
could these orders effect without " the essential instrument 
for governing the world ?" Would the landed interest sup 
ply or receive this essential instrument ? and will not this 
instrument make governours of a stock order, as it does of 
others ? Suppose two orders, one poor and didactick, the 
other possessing the instrument for governing; where would 
the power settle ? The system of dividing lands and amass- 
ing a paper interest, creates these orders. Titles and su- 
perstition have ceased to constitute aristocracy, among com- 
mercial and enlightened nations. Are we not in this class ? 
Shall we then expose our policy and freedom, to the only 
instrument which creates aristocracy, among enlightened 
nations, and be content with defending them against title 
and superstition, which are no longer instruments of ty- 
ranny ? 

The landed interest of the United States, being indisso- 
lubly betrothed to commerce, has been considered as so 
completely covering the interests of the society, that it is 
used in several states as a substratum of civil government* 
recognised as republican, by the guarantee in the federal 

* Vol. 3. o. 360". 



BSQ THE MODE OF INFUSING AKISTOCKACl" 

constitution. And where the range of suffrage is wider* 
but attended either by a greater portion of bank stock 
or executive patronage, the tendency towards monarchy or 
aristocracy is more visible, than where suffrage has been in 
some degree limited to land, but attended with less stock 
or patronage. 

Popular governments and popular principles could not 
thus flow from the landed interest, if it possessed aristocra- 
tisaj qualities. Majorities only sustain such principles and 
governments. By sustaining; them, the landed interest 
appears to cover a majority. Because it covers a majority, 
it does sustain them 5 it being impossible for a majority 
to maintain itself by oppressing a minority. Even the 
Goths and Vandals sought for plunder among great na- 
tions* not among little clans less wealthy than themselves. 

The extent of our country would alone suffice to prove, 
that our landed interest cannot be an aristocracy or a mo- 
narch. Had the whole earth formed one nation, with the 
lands divided as they are in our portion of it, such a landed 
interest would have been as capable of constituting an aris- 
tocracy, as the landed interest of the United States. It 
would have been the world itself; where would there have 
been other worlds, to bear its oppression or obey its power? 
Here it is the nation : where could it find subjects upon 
which to exercise an aristoeratieal spirit ? If any species 
of master interest should be interpolated upon our policy, 
it cannot therefore be the landed ; the alternative of which 
is limited by the laws of nature, to equal rights in a free 
government, or passive obedience under an arbitrary one. 

We lose truth in names and phrases, as children lose 
themselves in a wood, for want of geographical knowledge. 
Because titles have been frequently annexed to aristocracy, 
it is erroneously imagined to be made by titles -, and the 
thing dreaded can creep in, under an imagination, which 
cheats us into a belief, that its road lies through titles 
only. Lords without wealth, are an aristocracy, exem- 
plified by the hierarchical power of American bishops. 



ItfTO THE POLICY O* THE IT. STATES. 557 

Individual wealth, not derived from an exclusive interest, is 
so far from participating in the spirit of aristocracy, that 
its contrihutions must at least be equivalent to its ability, 
and its interest is therefore repugnant to every pecuniary 
oppression. 

Even its disbursements through the medium of tenant, 
would operate as diminutions of rent, and form deductions 
from its income. And this species of individual wealth, 
constitutes the whole mass of power and talents, by which 
the poor and uninformed are secured in their rights and li- 
berties, under the bond which unites all persons having the 
same interest. The prejudices arising from words, darken 
the mind so generally against a perception of real qualities 
and principles, as to justify us in recalling to the reader's 
recollection, a few cases to expose the frailty of such pre- 
cipitate conclusions. 

The Lacedemonians had two kings; but the govern- 
ment was aristocratick. The Athenians had a king archon : 
but the government was democratiek. The Roman gov- 
ernment was called indiscriminately a commonwealth or re- 
publiek, whether its complexion was aristocratick, demo- 
cratiek or monarchical. In all its stages, the English gov- 
ernment has been called a limited monarchy, whether the 
barons were masters of the king and people, the king of 
the people and barons, or a paper fabrick of the rest of the 
nation. The words « king or republiek," do not make a 
monarch or a free government. Nor do the words " duke, 
marquis, bishop," make an aristocracy. It is made by 
principles and qualities. A separate interest in a minority, 
is one principle or quality, which makes an aristocracy ; and 
a mode of extracts ;g wealth by law from the rest of the 
nation, another. Neither riches without a separate interest, 
nor a separate interest without riches, can in the present 
state of things make an aristocracy. 

Mr. Adams has cautioned us against the abuse of politi- 
cal phrases, whilst he reiterates the expressions ( - a mixed 
government; checks and balances ; middle orders," without 



55S THE MODE OF INFUSING ARISTOCRACY 

explaining the qualities or principles necessary lo make 
those checks, balances or middle orders * or considering the 
influence- upon this theory, from armies, patronage, cor- 
ruption, the poverty of a nominal middle order, or the enor- 
mous tvealih of a separate interest. Had Tacitus underta- 
ken to recommend the government of the Emperors to the 
Romans, he would in like manner have used the terms con- 
sul, senate, patrician, plebeian; and by suppressing the 
qualities of these orders, he might have easily proved, 
that a limited monarchy existed under the Roman empe- 
rors, as well; cheeked, balanced and provided with mid- 
dle orders, a| that existing under the corrupt system of 
England. | 

As governments change, names represent different things, 
but are often retained to gull prejudice and varnish tyranny. 
For this end, the names of senate, consul and patrician 
remained in Rome. For this end, the name " parliament'-* 
remains in England. In neither case, was " free and mode- 
rale government'* preserved; and in both, oppression was 
the effect of real changes under old names. 

Mr. Adams has even called the English form of govern- 
ment « republican ;" but if the United States should slide 
into it for that reason, they would act as the Athenians 
would have acted, by giving to Clitomachus (who had been 
branded with infamy) the command of an army, because his 
name signified " illustrious warrior." 

The hooks of fraud and tyranny, are universally baited 
with melodious words. " Passive obedience" was a bait 
sacrilegiously drawn from scripture. " Church and slate," 
from a fear of popery. " Checks and balances, and pub- 
lick faith and credit," are still more musical baits, and 
however harshly « patronage, corruption, paper stock 
and standing armies," may at first sound, even these words 
are at length thought by some to contain much secret 
harmony. 

Fine words are used to decoy, and ugly words to affright. 
« Security to private property" is attractive. " Invasion 



INTO THE POLICY OF THE V. STATES. 559 

of private property" deterring. The invader of course de- 
voutly uses the first phrase, and indignantly applies the 
second to those who oppose him. Where is there an in- 
stance of an invasion of private property, equal to that 
effected by the paper system of England ? As its greatest 
invader, it has of course been the loudest advocate for its 
safety. 

*< Energetick government" is a phrase happily chosen to 
please honest men, and to beguile nations of unmanageable 
power. Under the agreeable jingle in the antithesis, be- 
tween " protection and allegiance" was long hidden a large 
reservoir of arbitrary power. Of the same family is the 
ancient idea of « a contract between the long and the peo- 
ple." Implying equality, either party might construe this 
contract, and the active power of construction being in 
the hands of kings, they made all their own actions, ful- 
filments, and such actions of the people as they pleased, 
breaches. 

There is edification and safety in challenging political 
words and phrases as traitors, and trying them rigorously 
by principles, before we allow them the smallest degree of 
confidence. As the servants of principles, they gain admis- 
sion into the family, and thus acquire the best opportunities 
of assassinating their masters, should they become trea- 
cherous. That useful and major part of mankind, compri- 
sed within natural interests (by which I mean agricultural, 
commercial, mechanical, and scientifick ; in opposition to 
legal and artificial, such as hierarchical, patrician, and 
banking) is exclusively the object of imposition, whenever 
words are converted into traitors to principles. 

The good words " order, a sacred regard for private pro- 
perty, national credit," have made the British government 
bad ; and the good word « truth" makes sedition laws. The 
same words, faithful to principles, would protect private 
property against stock, keep a nation out of debt, destroy 
sedition law, and, in short, be the allies of honest and mode- 
rate government. 



560 THE MODE OE INFUSING ARISTOCRACY 

Thus the word " energy" may be an ally of freedom or 
despotism. The energy of monarchy is distinct in its 
qualities and end from the energy of republicanism* One 
is made of orders, stock, patronage and armies, to maintain 
the power of a government over a nation ; the other of equal 
rights, taxation for national use, division of power, publiek 
opinion and a national militia, to maintain the power of a 
nation over a government. Monarchical energy, is a Delilah, 
knowing that the great strength of free government lies in 
republican energy, and omitting no opportunity of shaving it 
away, to make room for itself. When it has once bound or 
blinded the popular Sampson, however he may chance to 
take vengeance of his enemies, he is generally crushed in 
their fall. 

Between the introduction of aristocratical, and the expul- 
sion of republican energy, there is an interregnum of prin- 
ciple, which requires great acuteness for the preservation 
of property. Aristocratical principles favour artificial pro- 
perty, such as paper stock, office, and corporate privileges $ 
republican, substantial property obtained by industry 
and talents, and not by law and sinecure. One species of 
this property preys upon the other. And it requires some 
judgement to change property, as the nature of its protection 
changes ; to escape from the drudgery of industry and tal- 
ents, and to share in the luxury of stock, office and privilege. 

Principles, congenial to aristocracy (among which mono- 
polies of wealth by law have been universally esteemed) are 
huntsmen in pursuit of republicanism, to strip her of her 
plumage. Will she turn and defend herself, or like a foolish 
bird, expect to escape by shutting her eyes upon her enemy ? 

It is extremely important that private property should be 
clearly ascertained, to withstand the assaults both of those 
who would abolish it by mobs, and of those who would de- 
fraud it by law to create an aristocracy. Civilized society is 
dissolved by the enthusiasm of one party, or corrupted by the 
knavery of the other 5 and it is the policy of our syrlem to 
guard against both, To apply this policy to the preservation 



INTO THE POLICY OF THE U. STATES. 561 

of the ligament upon which its own preservation depends, the 
nature of that ligament ought to be thoroughly understood. 

The fruit of labour or industry, is an unequivocal species 
of private property ; is that also an unequivocal species, 
w iiieh takes away this fruit ? If a law, which enables A to 
transfer to himself B's unequivocal private property, may 
boast of the protection it gives to property, by securing B's 
to A, oppression and fraud may upon the same ground jus- 
tify their most atrocious actions. And if laws for bestowing 
wealth, may be permanent, rigid and insatiable extortion- 
ers, they cannot be also guardians and protectors of private 
property. 

Such laws succeed, by seizing upon the passion of avarice, 
and bewildering computation. Although a vast majority 
of mankind universally lose property by these laws, each 
individual is at a loss how to class himself. Deluded by 
the hope of gain, he submits to an immoral mode of enrich- 
ing some, at the expense of others ; and yet by considering 
whether he is a member of general and natural, or of exclu- 
sive and factitious interests, the difficulty would vanish. It 
is easy to determine, whether we subsist by labour, industry 
or talents ; or by patronage, privilege, sinecure or stock. 
True private property, is a political being permanently guid- 
ed by good moral principles, because its interest is to do 
right ; spurious, one as permanently guided by evil, because 
its interest is to do wrong. The enmity between them is 
exactly that between religion and idolatry. Laws may be 
either the accomplices of spurious, or the protectors of le- 
gitimate private property. And the principle by which 
they are stampt with one or the other of these characters, 
ascertains what private property is. Laws to enable men 
to keep their property, stand exactly opposed to laws for 
transferring it to other men. Governments are instituted 
for the first object, but they strive to acquire the second. 
And no government of any form did ever acquire this second 
power, without using it to impoverish a nation and enrich 
an aristocray, title, hierarchical or stock, 



562 THE MODE OF INFUSING ARISTOCRACY 

A has inherited or earned a sum of money ; B, being 
more cunning than A, obtains a law enabling him to get 
A's money, directly or indirectly ; and after he has gotten 
it, the law guarantees it to B. Was this money private 
property in the hands of A ? Is the social sanction which 
secured it in his hands, less sacred or just, than the legal 
sanction which transferred it to B ? 

If property is admitted to be a social right, it does not 
follow that society gives an absolute power over it to go- 
vernments. Upon this ground however, sovereigns ingeni- 
ously invented forfeitures for offences, and applied them to 
their own use. By this feudal fraud, privileged orders 
were nurtured. Our policy detected and abolished this 
fraud. An invention for the benefit of society, ought not 
t(\ be used to its injury. It followed the same principle in a 
denunciation of the whole tribe of exclusive privileges, 
which like forfeitures, would all serve to feed some order 
or faction. And having thus disposed of forfeitures, and 
privileges, it never could have intended to invest law with a 
power to apply private property, to a use, to which it refu- 
ses to condemn fines for crimes. 

All societies have exercised the right of abolishing privi- 
leged, stipendiary or factitious property, whenever they be- 
came detrimental to tliem ; nor have kings, churches or 
aristocracies ever hesitated to do the same thing, for the 
same reason. The king of England joined the people and 
judges, in abolishing the tenures and perpetuities of the 
nobles ; the king and nobles united in abolishing the pro- 
perty of the popish clergy; the consistory of Rome sup- 
pressed the order of Jesuits and disposed of its property ;. 
and several of these states, have abolished intails, tithes and 
hierarchical establishments. What stronger ground can be 
occupied by any species of law-begotten wealth, than by 
these ? 

Poverty is justly exasperated against the wealth which 
caused it ; but it temperately contemplates wealth, flowing 
^rom industry and talents, and not from fraudulent laws. 



INTO THE POLICY OF THE V. STATES* 563 

It knows that as one man's industry, cannot make another 
man poorer ; so wealth gotten by legal means, without in- 
dustry, must. And if aristocracy is introduced into the 
United States by legal modes of dividing property, violent 
animosities between the rich and poor will attend it, to a 
greater extent than in other countries, because the means 
for controlling them are less. 

From the legal frauds by which property is transferred 
and amassed, human nature has derived most of its envy, 
malice, and hatred. And if the acquisitions of hierarchy , 
privilege, patronage, sinecure, bribery, charter and paper 
stock, have been but seldom able to inspire it with a suffi 
cient share of these passions, to assail fraudulent kinds of 
property; what danger can be apprehended by genuine pri- 
vate property, defended by all the sanctions which defend 
the spurious, with the addition of justice ? 

The only danger of innocent, arises from an alliance 
with guilty property. Such an alliance is assiduously 
sought for, and artfully supported, by its pretended friend 
and real foe. A knave will strive to associate himself with 
an honest man, and the latter must dissolve the connexion . 
or risk his reputation. Thus honest property is exposed to 
danger by an association with fraudulent property; and its 
safety is ensured, by dissolving the connexion. Honest 
property, disunited from a system which deeds away a nation 
to individuals or factions, by offices, privileges, charters, 
loans, banks, and all the variety of incorporations, will have 
nothing to fear, whenever publick indignation and justice 
awake. It will both escape and inflict the fate of its natu- 
ral enemies, by disdaining to serve under their banners, or 
to become the dupe of their frauds. 

To the indignation inspired by the fraudulent legal 
modes for acquiring wealth, mankind are indebted for the 
pernicious and impracticable idea of equalising property by 
law. This speculation has been considered by philosophers, 
in contrast with its opposite. It seemed to (hem more rea- 
sonable and just, that property should be made equal, than 



56i THE MODE OF INFUSING ARISTOCRACY 

unequal, by law. Destroy the alternative, by assailing both 
its branches with the benefits arising from leaving property 
to be distributed by industry, and the argument would 
assume a new aspect. It would be discovered, that arts and 
sciences, peace and plenty, have never been found, disunited 
from metes and bounds. And that hence mankind have 
preferred that branch of the alternative which required, to 
that which rejected them ; considering a system of property, 
compounded of honesty and fraud, as preferable to its 
abolition. 

By artfully drawing the question to this point, legal, 
factitious or fraudulent property ; comprising every species 
resulting from direct and indirect modes of accumulation by 
law, at the expense of others ; has been able in all civilized 
countries, to unite itself with substantial, real or honest pro- 
perty ; comprising accumulations arising from fair and 
useful industry and talents. The equalising speculation, 
hy proposing to destroy both, united these two opposite 
moral beings in a defensive war ; just as a good and a bad 
man would unite against an assassin, indifferently determin- 
ed to murder them both. Had philosophers wisely avoided 
this snare, and confined the discussion to a discrimination 
between the useful and pernicious kinds of property, they 
would never have given to the latter the benefit of an alli- 
ance by which it is sustained ; and might have long since 
settled some definition of private property, sufficiently per- 
spicuous, to defend mankind against the pecuniary oppres- 
sions they are forever suffering for want of it. Instead of 
associating honest and fraudulent property in one interest, 
by the chimerical and impracticable equalising project, they 
would have established a rational and practicable distinc- 
tion, between that species of private property founded only 
inlaw: such as is gained by privilege, hierarchy, paper, 
charter, and sinecure ; and that founded also in nature ; 
arising from industry, arts and sciences. And they would 
have proved, that the two species constituted two principles 
in the world of property, as strictly opposed to each other, as 



IfrTO THE POLICY oiT THE IT. STATES. 565 

the two principles in the moral world, one of which is wor- 
shipped and the other execrated. Blended, they make up 
a system of property, similar to a system of religion, com- 
pounded of theocracy and demonoeracy. 

Nothing is more remarkable in their contrariety, than 
that fictitious property is founded in the principle of agra- 
rian laws, which it reprobates. The simple objection to 
these is, that they take away a portion of one man's proper- 
ty, and give it to another. How otherwise can the balance 
of property between orders be effected, as contended for by 
Mr. Adams and Lord Shaftsbury ? Does it alter the princi- 
ple, to transfer the property by means, avowed and direct, 
or insidious and indirect ? However indirect, yet privilege, 
hierarchy, office, paper, charter, and sinecure, are means, 
by which the property of some is taken away, and given to 
others. All the difference is, that in agrarian laws, or laws 
for an equal division of land, the principle is applied between 
individuals ; and in laws for nurturing separate interests, 
between orders. , 

A single effect, observable wherever Mr. Adams's and 
Lord Shaftsbury's system exists, of a balance of property 
between orders, is quoted to illustrate this reasoning. It is 
attended by a multitude of poor rates, work houses and hos- 
pitals. Why ? Because many individuals of the most nu- 
merous order, being excessively impoverished by dividing 
or distributing property among orders, would perish, unless 
provided for by those legally enriched. The right of the 
poor to require subsistence from those who have made them 
poor, is so strong as to be admitted by the authors of their 
impoverishment. An agrarian law, or an equal division of 
property, would not be equally attended by poor rates, work 
houses and hospitals, because it would not equally impover- 
ish individuals. Will it be contended, that laws which im- 
poverish a great number of individuals, are less atrocious 
violators of justice and private property, than laws which 
impoverish none ? We must now discern, that the principle 
of distributing property by law, is more malignant, when 



B66 THE MODE OF INFUSING ARISTOCRACY 

applied to equalise wealth between orders, than when appli- 
ed to equalise wealth between individuals. A principle, 
more malignant against social happiness, than a general 
agrarian division, cannot be the genuine principle which 
causes society to guard private property. Thence we are 
necessarily driven in search of some other principle, and if 
we are right in considering industry, arts and sciences, as 
its true sources, a correct definition of private property, 
must exclude all the legal modes invented for its division. 
Lord Shaftsbury and Mr. Adams strenuously contend, 
that a balance of property among orders, is necessary to 
preserve their freedom. In like manner, a balance of pro- 
perty among individuals, is necessary to preserve theirs. 
The first species of balance, destroys the second. The legal 
distribution of wealth, necessary to preserve the balance of 
property, and its dependant, the freedom of orders, destroys 
its distribution by industry and talents, equally necessary to 
preserve the second species of balance, and its dependant, 
the freedom of men. Thus the attainable object of a free 
government, is destroyed by the forlorn attempt to keep 
three orders free, by balancing wealth and power among 
them. By transferring, an agrarian law, invades property. 
AH laws for this purpose, direct or indirect, are equally its 
invaders. Those for dividing lands, and for making sine- 
cures, useless armies and offices, bank stock and hierarchies, 
transfer the property of some to others, and therefore all 
belong to the same class. If an end of a government is to 
protect property, it cannot be an end of the same govern- 
ment to make these laws, because the two ends are contrary 
to each other. It would have as good a right, under a pow- 
er to protect property, to make an equal division of it by a 
direct law, as an unequal division of it, by indirect laws. 
Our policy labours to prevent necessary laws from degene- 
rating into the latter usurpation, by cautiously guarding 
against excessive expenditures even for publick uses ; and it 
excludes a right of legislation, for the purpose of transfer- 
ring private property from some to others, or for the sake of 



INTO THE POLICY OF THE U. STATES. 567 

creating or balancing orders or separate interests, civi] or 
religious. Laws for maintaining a balance of property 
among orders, necessary to sustain an aristocracy, how- 
ever disguised, defeat every sjach principle of our policy. 

By suffering industry to distribute property, industry 
will be created, it teaches no vice. It bestows health and 
content. Tt is a pledge of virtue. It double our happiness 
by enabling us to blend with it the happiness of others. Its 
benefits reiterate anl spread like the undulations of the 
waves. Yet the hags, feudality, hierarchy, privilege and 
stock, have successively been preferred as regulators of pri- 
vate property, to this charming goddess. The distribution 
of property by law, first introduces into a government what 
I shall call an aristocracy of parties ; and an appearance of 
this species of aristocracy, is a proof that its pabulum exists. 
The few who contend for prizes, arrange a nation into par- 
ties, who zealously plead for and against each set of distri- 
butees, both having in view the goods and chattels of the 
infatuated advocates. 

The similitude between party and aristocracy, is explain- 
ed by Mr. Hume's distinction between an aristocracy of in- 
dividuals, and one consisting of a separate interest ; exem- 
plifying the first by the Polish* and the second by the Vene- 
tian nobility. An aristocracy or party of individuals, con- 
sists of a few Polish noblemen, at the head of an ignorant 
and obedient mass of followers. An aristocracy or party 
of interest, consists of a conclave of individuals, united for 
the end of defrauding others to enrich themselves. In the 
same essay Mr. Hume has said, that free governments are 
most happy for those who partake of their freedom, but 
most ruinous and oppressive to their provinces. They dis- 
pense ruin and oppression to provinces, as the inevitable 
effect of a separate interest. The certainty of this moral 
law, is nearly demonstrated in the relation between England 
and Ireland, and quite so in India. If a free government if? 
converted by a power of distributing wealth by law, into an 
oppressive aristocracy of its provinces, every species of aris- 



Z68 THE MODE OE INFUSING AltlSTOCRACY 

toeraey or separate interest, must be guided by -the same 
moral law. 

The United States exhibit four parties, the republican, 
monarchical, stock, and patronage. The two parties of 
principle, unsophisticated by t!ie parties of separate inte- 
rest, would discuss with moderation, and decide with integ- 
rity ; but the two last, accepted on both sides as recruits, by 
an ardour for victory, though known to be allies who serve 
for plunder, empoison *them by all the contaminations of an 
interest, distinct from the puhliek: and by ail the animosities, 
aristocracies of interest inspire. Aristocracy or separate 
interest in our case, at present takes refuge under one and 
then under the other of our parties, because it is not yet 
able to stand alone; but whilst it is fondling first one and 
then the other of its nurses, it is sucking both into a con- 
sumption, and itself towards maturity. 

It is thus that patronage transforms any party into an 
aristocracy of interest. The money dispensed by the exe- 
cutive power of England, creates a powerful aristocracy of 
interest, unfriendly to the national interest. The patron- 
age of the President of the United States, is aggravated by 
the temptation to employ it for his re-election. This aris- 
tocracy of patronage, arises from a division of property by 
law, and the only modes of reconciling it with republican 
government, are, to settle salaries by a standard, too low to 
create a party ©f interest; or to divide patronage so widely, 
as to prevent it from becoming the property of one man, or 
of one body of men. People will then cease to enlist under 
some banner to gain an office, to elect partisans, and to raise 
by their own suffrages a mercenary civil army for the de- 
struction of their own liberties. The etfect of the inconsi- 
derable sum laid out by patronage upon Congress* reflects 
with fidelity, the fatal aristocracy of interest to be expected 
from the vast sum, distributed by banking among the people. 

The enlightened author of the life of General Washing- 
ton, ascribes the parties in the United States, to the intrigues 
(>?^h: Jefferson, to French influence, and to other t ran si- 



INTO THE POLICY OF THE U. STATES. M9 

Cory and fluctuating causes. If his opinion had been correct, 
these parlies would have disappeared with the supposed 
causes. But being in truth produced by the mass of pro- 
perty transferred by funding, banking and patronage, crea- 
ting (to borrow Mr. Hume's phrase) an aristocracy of inte- 
rest, they yet exist, because these laws divided the nation 
into a minority enriched, and a majority furnishing the 
riches ; and two parties, seekers and defenders of wealth, 
are an unavoidable consequence. All parties, however loy- 
al to principles at uvst, degenerate into aristocracies of in- 
terest at last ; and unless a nation is capable of discerning 
the point where integrity ends and inw.d begins, popular 
parties are among the surest modes of introducing an aris- 
tocracy. The policy of protecting duties to force manu- 
facturing, is of the same nature, and v. ill produce the same 
consequences as that of enriching a noble interest* a church 
interest, or a paper interest ; because, bounties to capital are 
taxes upon industry, and a distribution of property by law. 
And it is the worst mode of encouraging aristocracy, 'be- 
cause, to the evil of distributing wealth at home by law, is 
to be added the national loss arising from foreign retaliation 
upon our own exports. An exclusion by us of foreign ar- 
ticles of commerce, will beget an exclusion by foreigners of 
our articles of commerce, or at least corresponding duties ; 
and the wealth of the majority will be as certainly dimin- 
ished to enrich capital, as if it should be obliged to export a 
million of guineas to bring back a million of dollars, or to 
bestow a portion of its guineas upon this separate, interest. 
As a separate or aristocratieal interest, is the cause 
of party in countries where avarice or feasoii prevails over 
superstition and fanaticism, it follows, thai instead of 
party spirit being natural to free governments, it is 
only natural to those, where aristocracies or parties of 
interest are artificially created and combined by law ; 
and that by uncreating these causes, such aristocracies 
and parties naturally die. Ambition itself, in the pre- 
sent state of manners ; despairs of gratification, except 



570 THE MODE 0¥ IKWSIN'G ARISTOCRACY 

by the help of a party founded in interest, which it can 
create hy no mode, except by that of invading property by 
law or force It must hire an army or a legislature, or 
both, to gain power. It cannot hire either without money, 
and it cannot obtain money, without associates. If ambi- 
tion is unable to form an aristocracy or party, except by 
violating and transferring property, it follows, that no other 
means exist for its formation ; and of course, that its ap- 
pearance is a proof that property is violated and transfer- 
red. It follows also, that free and fair governments cannot 
be subject to party, but such only as have ceased to be free 
arid fair by the creation of aristocracy, or a party founded 
in interest. If this reasoning is true, there is neither wis- 
dom nor policy, in providing constitutional precepts requir- 
ing ambition and avarice to be quiet ; and yet to nourish 
them by law. It makes the constitution a blind, from be- 
hind which legal parties or aristocracies strike nations. 

Orders enslave nations, by making parties ; and they are 
enabled to make them, by laws for tranferring property. 
If such laws make parties, and if the party spirit of or- 
ders, is the cause of their oppression; then, though titles 
are excluded, yet wherever party spirit is created, the op- 
pression produced by orders is secured. Patrician and 
feudal parties were made by conquered lands ; church par- 
lies by tythes, offerings and endowments ; military parties, 
by wages; patronage parties, by offices, bribes and sinecures ; 
and paper parties, by stock, interest and dividends. All 
were made by laws for transferring or invading private pro- 
perty, all are parties or aristocracies of interest, and all 
are avoided by forbearing to make the laws which make 
hem, and in no other way. 

Two causes are adduced to shew, that property and not 
title, creates the parties or aristocracies which enslave na- 
tions. The whig party was made strong in England, by the 
paper stock with which it was enriched and united. In spite 
ef its principles, it was forced by the regimen of this legal 
T*ealth to enslave the nation, by poisoning the principles it 



INTO THE POLICY OF THE V. STATES. 571 

professed to nurture. Hence a modern whig may believe, 
that it would have been better for the English nation, had 
success followed the landed tories, who would have stran- 
gled the paper system of the whigs in its infancy. If the 
stock system of the United States proceeds as it has done 
for fifty years more, it will give occasion for a similar eonr- 
putation. This case proves, that the present state of En- 
gland, was caused by a party, formed by a legal and artificial 
mode of distributing property, and not by a titled order ; 
and that paper stock was this mode. Paper stock can 
therefore make aristocracies or parties, able to overthrow 
political principles. 

The Cincinnati of the United States could never form a 
faction or party; because title, without fraudulent laws to 
transfer property, is incompetent to such an end ; hut the 
funding and banking system could ; because such laws with- 
out title, possess this competency. Even at home we have 
already learnt, that titles cannot make parties ; that laws 
for distributing property can ; and that such laws operate 
under our political system as they do under all others. 

The precise principle we are contending for, is resorted 
to by the constitution of the United States, to prevent party 
and faction. But it is applied only to states, and not to in- 
dividuals. Partialities by law, for increasing or diminishing 
the taxes of a state, and every species of exclusive privi- 
lege, or exclusive burden, between states, is carefully guard- 
ed against. This is done, because laws of either complexion, 
would unexceptionably transfer property from the unfa- 
voured to the favoured states ; and would unexceptionably 
also create the former into an exasperated, and the latter, 
iiito a fraudulent party, or an aristocracy. This fraudulent 
party, could not for a moment deceive states into an opinion, 
that laws for bestowing exclusive privileges and wealth up- 
on other states, or exclusive burdens upon themselves, 
would add to their wealth or happiness. A state makes 
but one moral being ; its capacity is equal to the moral be- 
ings who would practise this deception : it contains no ini 



572 THE MODE OF INFUSING ARISTOCRACY 

inical ingredients, willing to sacrifice it to another stale, 
because of its unity as a moral being ; nor has its legislature 
any interest, to make and hide this sacrifice from the people. 
It would therefore instantly decide, that ail laws for en- 
riching particular states, directly or indirectly, were fraudu- 
lent and oppressive. 

Do sot such laws operate between individuals, precisely 
as they operate between states ? Being fraudulent and op- 
pressive in relation to individuals, as they are in relation to 
states, they will also generate party, faction or aristocracy. 
It is less violent than a party of states would be, because 
the deceptions used ig defend the imposition, have some 
success among individuals, from their ignorance, and from 
the arts of those interested. These causes of deception do 
not apply to factitious modes of transferring property be- 
tween states, and therefore a state is never deceived, and 
indignantly resists such laws in every shape. 

Suppose, for instance, that congress had invested parti- 
cular states, with the exclusive privilege of supplying the 
Union with paper currency by banks, and had prohibited 
the issuing of any other. Could the states, unpossessed of 
a share in the privilege, have been persuaded that it would 
add to their wealth, happiness or prosperity ? They would, 
in the supposed ease, have occupied the place with all its 
consequences, of that entire mass of individuals, unpossessed 
of bank stock. Yet in an eternity, no civilized state could 
have been made to believe itself benefitted, by having the 
bank paper of the privileged states circulated within it. 
An exclusive privilege of furnishing the United States v.ith 
manufactures would have an equivalent effect. 

By excluding partial modes of transferring property h\ 
Jaw between states, the constitution designs to deprive am- 
bition and avarice of a handle, by which to work up and 
manage geographical passions and parties, for their own 
selfish ends. How can it be just and wise, to offer a like 
handle to ambition and avarice, in a social union of indivi- 
duals, by permitting them to transfer and accumulate pro- 



I^fTO THE POX.TCY.0^ THE XT. STATES, &tw 

perty by law, if it is unjust and unwise to admit of its 
existence, in the union between the states ? If its exclusion 
in one case, is calculated to counteract parties, factions or 
aristocracies, formed of states, its exclusion in the other, 
would prevent parties, factions or aristocracies, formed of 
citizens. By excluding it in both, the only tool with which 
ambition and avarice can undermine and destroy a free 
government, can no longer be forged. 

If there exists no mode under the constitution of the 
United States, by which the government, or some section 
of it can exercise partialities between states in relation to 
property, they will probably escape the evil of geographical 
aristocracy. Should a statesman, an orator, a hero, or a 
patriot, begin to draw lines of separate or exclusive interest 
from north to south, from east to west, along a chain of hills, 
or from the source of a river to the ocean ; like all legal 
frauds for distributing property ; they will be merely design- 
ed to enrich some party of interest, at the expense of those 
whose benefit is pretended ; and as these lines drawn by 
civil law, invariably mean fraud and avarice, they only ac- 
quire the additional attributes of ambition and treason, 
when attempted for political revolution, l&ni if the pretext 
for such an experiment was ever so preposterous, jet if it 
was connected with a partial distribution of property by law 
between the states, it would create a geographical party, as 
was in some degree illustrated by the effects of the funding 
system, and may be illustrated by the influence of executive 
patronage. The richer it becomes, the more zealous will 
districts be, led by the exertions of fraud which hopes of 
office or contracts will excite, to gain the presidency. 

The artifice of enemies, and the credulity of friends, in 
fostering an opinion, that party spirit was natural to honest 
and free government, prevents us from discovering that it 
is invariably produced by dishonest or ambitious designs, 
and unexeeptionably indicates t\ie existence of an aYisto- 
eracy of interest. Sir. Adams allows that party spirit is 
a regular fruit of ordersy without deducing it from nristo- 



574 THE MODE OF INFUSING ARISTOCRACY 

cratical laws for distributing property, allowed also by him 
to be necessary to the existence of these orders. If then 
party spirit, orders, or aristocracy, How from the same 
cause, whatever will prevent either, will prevent all, and 
whatever will produce one, will produce the rest. As a 
distribution of property by law is the common cause, an ex- 
clusion of such laws, is the common remedy ; and as accor- 
ding to our idea of a republican government, it cannot 
exist in union with these partial laws, the parties they pro- 
duce are chargeable to a different form of government, par- 
tial to a separate interest, and in principle, aristocratieaJ. 
Mr. Godwin has said " that all government is founded in 
opinion, and that publick institutions will fluctuate with the 
fluctuations of opinion." This position assigns the publick 
approbation to all governments, which have existed or can 
exist. It bestows upon an aristocracy or party, whose power 
is planted in self interest, the sanction of publick opinion ; 
and raises the influence of authority to the highest pitch. 
"With equal justice, he might have assigned the same sanc- 
tion to the power of a disciplined army, over an undiscipli- 
ned nation. It is never the opinion of nations that slavery 
is good ; jet they are enslaved. Nor is it the opinion of 
nations that an aristocracy or party of interest is good, but 
they suffer it, because the individuals of a general interest 
cannot be cemented in the same way with those of a sepa- 
rate one, as there is none to supply the glue. 

Opinion may in one sense be correctly considered as the 
foundation of all governments. They are all derived from 
general or partial opinion ; from the opinion of the nation, 
or of some party of interest ; but as general and party opin- 
ion, are opposite and contradictory sources of government, 
one must be bad. As moral enemies, they cannot unite. 
Mingled; corns-notion or death ensues, as in the case of poisoa 
mingled with wholesome drugs. Milton could not bring 
back Satan to heaven by the benignity of the Almighty, 
because good and evil are incapable of associating. Even 
the license of poetry does not extend to a fable contrary to 



INTO THE POLICY OF THE V. STATES, B7& 

nature. Mr. Adams contends for this mixture, in the very 
act of proving that it has universally failed. 

General, and not party opinion, is the principle of our 
policy. All our constitutions contain efforts in favour of 
one, and no efforts in favour of the other. Laws which 
have the effect of mixing party opinion with general opi- 
nion, correspond with Mr. Adams's policy, and have ever 
been fatal to such a policy as ours. Thej introduce party 
interest into the departments of government, and create 
intrigues against the general interest ; exactly as Mr* Adams 
proves orders to have universally done. A slock or patro- 
nage interest will be as selfish, as a noble or religious inte- 
rest. The publick interest and the party interest, commence 
hostilities and continue the war, until one of them is van- 
quished ; and as defeat has hitherto pursued the publick 
interest, it is unaccountable that it should be persuaded to 
create a foe, before whose prowess it is destined to fall. 

A separate interest, drawing wealth from a nation, and 
able to gain an influence in a government, cannot be a re- 
publican, any more than an individual nobleman in the 
same situation. To the term " republican," the Americans 
nave annexed the modern meaning of general good. The 
opinion, that parties were natural to republicks is the crea- 
ture of the old idea, that republicks could be constituted of 
orders or parties. Parties are indeed natural to govern- 
ments made of parties. But if we reject this old construc- 
tion of the term, which makes it to nsean any thing or noth- 
ing ; we ought also to reject the old errour, that parties 
were natural to republicks, as arising from the errour, which 
considered governments formed of parties or orders as 
republicks. 

The antipathy of party spirit to publick spirit, sophisti- 
cated terms, for the purpose of deceiving nations, so that 
old as the world is, we still want apolitical word, to express 
the idea of national self government, unadulterated by orders 
or parties of interest. If republicanism is allowed to con- 
vey the idea of a government guided by publick opinion and 

7-i 



576 THE MODS OF INFUSING ARISTOCBlGY 

operating for puhlick good, then wherever a legislature is 
guided or influenced by the opinion of a banking party, the 
government has ceased to be a republick, as completely as 
if it was influenced by a king. 

Despotisms are more lasting than free governments, be- 
cause, as they do not suffer an order or a party possessed 
of exclusive power and privileges to exist, they are not sub- 
ject to party spirit. By making free governments as little 
subject to party spirit, they will probably become more per- 
manent than despotisms. It is excluded from despotisms, 
by excluding separate interests, calculated to plunder, and 
then dethrone the monarch with his own wealth; and it 
will be excluded from free governments, by forbearing to 
create these separate interests, still more dangerous to na- 
tional wealth and sovereignty. 

The appearance of parties of interest under a despot ick 
government, is a proof that a new power has crept in, aspi- 
ring to the control of the despotism. A conflict of course 
commences, which ends in the destruction of one of the 
combatants. The appearance of such an aristocracy, under 
a free government, or one founded on common interest, 
indicates also the existence of a new power, and a similar 
conflict is unavoidable. Despotism will seldom create and 
nurture its own foe ; free government is frequently seduced 
to do so. A despotick sovereignty keeps patronage in its 
own hands, and never confers privileges independent of its 
own will. A national sovereignty surrenders patronage to 
an individual, and charters away exclusive rights and emo- 
luments. The consequences which would result to a des- 
potick sovereignty from such a policy, do result to a national 
sovereignty. Reasoning is at an end, if the same moral 
causes, are not allowed to produce the same effects. If par- 
ties under despotisms are in collision with despotick sove- 
reignty ; parties under free governments must be in collision 
with national. And if the suppression of a party interest, 
is necessary to save a despotism, it must be necessary to 
save a fre« government. The appearance of party is a beacon 



r?TTO THE POLICY OF THE tf. STATES. 577 

proclaiming a tendency, which instantly alarms despotism ; 
and it brings back the government to its principle by sup- 
pressing (he inimical tendency. Free government lias only 
to be equally vigilant against these inimical tendencies, to 
live longer than despotism ,• for as party interest is unnatu- 
ral to one in a state of purity, so is it to the other. 

Instances without number might be adduced, to shew* 
that separate interest is a thermometer accurately disclosing 
the progress of a revolution, both in property and princi- 
ples ; and that the latter are modelled by fraudulent dispo- 
sitions of the first. In England, though titles remain, 
patrician and plebeian parties have yielded to a party or 
aristocracy of interest. Whigs and torses are melted into 
one mass, by the same crucible. This crucible is made of 
paper stock and patronage. The property it invades, plun- 
ders, and distributes, has begotten new parties, and abo- 
lished old principles. In the United States, no pasties of 
importance have ever appeared, except such as arose from 
paper stock and patronage ; and by this transfer of property, 
old principles, as in England, will unquestionably be altered 
or destroyed. 

If the term " patronage" was limited to wages for pub- 
lick service, legislative, executive or judicial, yet should 
those wages be made so high as to produce detriment to the 
publick, the surplus beyond the sum required by publiek 
good is fraudulently transferred by law. In computing them, 
every consideration in relation to the receiver of the wages, 
ought to be excluded, because they are bestowed to benefit, 
not him, but the nation. Even legislative wages, capable 
of protracting sessions for the sake of transferring a greater 
mass of property, from the payer to the receiver, or of ex- 
citing election frauds may form a secret and mischievous 
party of interest, under its own patronage. 

The argument, by which plentiful wages are defended, 
is, the tendency of low to expel merit and talents from 
legislatures, and to throw government into the hands of a 
wealthy order. This argument can only be of force m 



578 THE MODE OF INFUSING ARISTOCRACY 

countries, where legal means are used to create wealthy 
separate interests. Where wealth is distributed by indus- 
try and talents, and not by law, it will nearly cover the 
merit and talents of a country, and no wealthy order can 
usurp the legislative power, because none will exist. And 
high wages, far from enabling merit and virtue to curb a 
wealthy separate interest, are only another motive, and 
new means, for enabling them to gain possession of legisla- 
tures, by corrupting election. 

It is said that Doctor Franklin, convinced that the evils 
of patronage outweighed the benefits of wages to publick 
officers, would not receive any as chief magistrate of Penn- 
sylvania. Nations require civil and military services. 
Militia services are rendered to great extent without wages, 
and those paid for them in war, are regulated by the idea 
of publick benefit, and not of adequate compensation. Par- 
simony, applied to civil duties, would not fall heavier on the 
rich, than it does on the poor, when applied to military 
duties. If the chief burden. of military service is inflicted 
on one class, as a duty, because it is most capable from 
its number of discharging it ; ought not the chief burden 
of civil service to be inflicted on the other, as a duty also, 
because it chiefly possesses the talents for discharging that ? 
A standing army of mercenary civil officers, being as fatal 
to free government, as an army of soldiers, the militia 
principle may be as useful and necessary in the one case, 
as in the other. 

Wages sufficiently high to protract legislative sessions, 
are a sinecure paid by the publick to corrupt the department 
of government, which ought to be the purest. They excite 
official fraud and artifice, and subject members to executive 
influence for the sake of re-election : and tend in this way 
towards an aristocracy of interest, of the species most ma- 
lignant to free and fair government ; namely, that com- 
pounded of legislative corruption and executive influence. 

We ought fully to comprehend the distinction between 
a personal aristocracy, and an aristocracy of interest, lest 



INTO THE POLICY 0¥ THE U. STATES.' 579 

we should be surprised by the one, whilst we are watching 
the other. Hume's illustration of the latter by the Spartan 
aristocracy, would have been as apt, had that aristocracy 
extracted its subsistence from the mechanicks and cultiva- 
tors, or Helots, by paper stock, as by the mode it pursued. 
It had no titles, and was one interest living on another. 
The impossibility of providing a balance of property in the 
United States, for a personal aristocracy, was explained, to 
shew that an aristocratical principle cannot be introduced 
in that mode, and if not in that, it can only be introduced 
in the mode of an aristocracy of interest. Through 
principles, and not names, this species of political pow- 
er, becomes real and oppressive. Was any person ever 
weak enough to discern hierarchy, aristocracy, or mon- 
archy, in Scotch bishops, the American Cincinnati, or 
Theodore king of Corsica ? Wealth is indispensable to sus- 
tain both a personal aristocracy, and an aristocracy of inte- 
rest. The first can never obtain this indispensable princi- 
ple in the United States, except they should be subdued by 
an invading or a native army, and divided among its chief- 
tains. The second may obtain it, by means of patronage, 
corruption, privilege, and paper stock. It may steal into 
sovereignty with great rapidity, by selling its infhien.ee in 
society to the personal or disinterested parties alternately. 
Every aristocracy of interest is ardent in this traffick, and 
a love of power unhappily induces all political parties (un- 
less they are controlled by nations) to bestow wealth and 
credit upon this species of aristocracy, until their own prin- 
ciples are lost in the corruption they have countenanced to 
preserve them, and they themselves sink into a state of sub- 
jection to their own instruments. 



[ 58® ] 



SECTION THE NINTH. 



THE LEGAL POLICY OF THE UNITED J3TATES, 



JvAontesojuieu's analysis of forms of government, is 
neither moral nor numerical. lie divides them into " re- 
publican, monarchical, and despotick," and the presence or 
absence of law constitutes his criterion of liberty and des- 
potism. But having by these definitions disclosed a par- 
tiality for his country, he proceeds to truth, by proving 
that civil laws are the instruments for fostering or destroy- 
ing both free and despotick governments, and that neither 
can be preserved, except by an analogy of legal to consti- 
tutional principles. Whatever analysis of governments we 
adopt, must also be an analysis for legislation. If we 
adopt the numerical, the same laws cannot be congenial 
with the three, nor with any two of its forms ; if the moral, 
it is still more difficult to reconcile the same laws, with 
both good and bad principles. The necessity of civil law* 
to foster or impair every form of government, makes it 
equally indispensable to a free nation and a monarch, to be 
able to distinguish its character and effects, for the preser- 
vation of liberty or despotism. A conviction that republi- 
can forms beget the first, and monarchical the second, united 
with an ignorance of the laws adapted to the preservation 
or introduction of either, excites the fermentation of mobs, 
and ends in the tranquillity of tyranny. 

An incapacity to discern the difference between a power 
to divide and to protect property, or between a national 
militia and a mercenary army, is an incapacity for the pre- 
servation of a free government. As the first member of 
each contrast corrupts or enervates nations, they belong to 



THE LEGAI. POLICY 01" THE V. STATES. 5&i 

(lie evil class of moral principles. Individuals, parties or 
governments use all the means placed in their hands to ob- 
tain their ends ; and a dependence for defence upon a mer- 
cenary army, renders a nation unable to defend itself. The 
Jesuitical maxim " that every thing is lawful to effect good 
ends," makes every thing lawful in the eyes of governments 
and parties, which is necessary to effect their own ends ; 
because self love convinces all men that their ends are good. 
Every principle, bad or good, drawn from the moral quali- 
ties of an individual, applies to a multitude. A power ma- 
king one man a despot, will make despots of a party of men.; 
the only difference being, that one species of despotism re- 
sembles a scorching fire ; the other, a consuming confla- 
gration. Parties clothed with evil or despotiek powers? 
destroy free governments with a rage and rapidity far out- 
stripping the capacity of individual tyrants, because many 
men can do more mischief than one. This fact demonstrates 
the incapacity of the numerical analysis for informing us 
whether a government is free or despotick, and explodes 
the hideous doctrine " that the will of a majority can do 
no wrong," under which parties, in imitation of kings, often 
endeavour to hide atrocious legal violations of good moral 
principles. Many men can even do more wrong to one or 
a few, than one or a few can do to many. This analysis is 
still more defective as a criterion of good or bad laws, be- 
cause those of its best form are not necessarily good, and 
no commixture of its several forms can make arbitrary or 
fraudulent laws, free or just. 

The principle « that a government and its laws must be 
of the same moral nature to subsist together," furnishes 
the only existing security for the preservation both of a free 
and an arbitrary form of government. Monarchy cannot 
subsist upon republican laws, nor a republick upon monar- 
chical. The numerical analysis can inform us, whether we 
are governed by one, a few, or many persons, but its whole 
stock of knowledge is expended in the performance of this 
paltry office, and it is utterly unable to give us any instruct 



533 THE LEGAL POLICY OF THE V. STATE Sa 

tion as to the mode of preserving the selected form of go* 
Terr, merit. But an analysis founded in moral principles, 
furnishes nations with constitutional restraints upon go- 
vernments, and with perpetual sentinels faithfully warn- 
ing them of the approach of their worst foes ; bad laws. It 
transfers popular attention from the persons composing the 
numerical analysis, to the principles by which it is itself 
composed ; and settles a wise veneration or a just hatred 
upon the good and bad divisions of these principles, instead 
of that ridiculous veneration for a president and a congress, 
u king and a parliament, or an emperor and a senate, which 
never discloses the approach of a single foe to liberty. A 
moral analysis alone can teach nations the only mode of 
sustaining a free government. It can detect attempts to 
destroy our moral constitutional principles of a division of 
power between the people and the government, or between 
the general and state governments, by political or civil 
laws. And it can keep us attentive to the fact, that a pow- 
er in a government of any form, to deal out wealth and po- 
verty by law, -overturns liberty universally ; because it is a 
power by which a nation is infallibly corrupted ; and the 
legislature, whose laws caused the corruption, is at length 
forced by the national depravity, to abridge the liberty of 
the people ; or an usurper makes it a strong argument, even 
with good men, for erecting a despotiek government. A 
power in Congress, for instance, of influencing the wealth 
or poverty of states by taxing exports and making roads 
or canals ; or of individuals, by charters ; would be used by 
successive parties for self preservation, with an activity, by 
which government would exchange the duty of protecting 
for the privilege of regulating property. The alternative 
of receiving or yielding the golden fleece, according to the 
will of these parties, would suddenly excite an equal de- 
gree of baleful activity among the people, to gain the one 
and to avoid the other ; and soon overturn the whole cata- 
logue of moral principles, necessary for the preservation of 
a free form of government. In whatever numerical class 



THE LEGAL POLICY OF THE U. STATES. 583 

a government is arranged, a power of advancing the wealth 
of one part of the nation, by civil laws, will be used by its 
successive administrators to obtain a corrupt influence, 
wholly inconsistent with any good moral principles intervo- 
ven in a constitution, and certainly destructive of them. 

Every party of interest, whether a noble, a religious, 
or a military order ; or created by a corrupting degree of 
legislative or executive patronage; or by usurping a power 
of regulating property by means of paper credit, charters 
or fraudulent wars ; is the instrument and ally of the pow- 
er by which its interest can be fed or starved. It must 
acquire an influence over legislation, both to do its own 
work, and the work of the power it serves. It can by law 
slip under governments anew substratum, without altering 
a feature of the numerical analysis. And it will be inva- 
riably purchased at the publick expense, by the political 
party in possession of the government, at a rate propor- 
tioned to the service it may be able to render. 

This game between political and pecuniary parties, is 
precisely the cause by which free, moderate, and honest 
forms of government are destroyed ; it inflicts heavier 
taxation, than any other species of misrule ; and it cannot 
be carried on, except by a legislative power to regulate 
wealth and poverty. In England this power is complete, 
and has scattered every where parties of interest of all 
sizes, and individuals, paid for their services directly or in- 
directly by the political party in power,, at the national 
expense, and ready to serve any political party whatso- 
ever for pay. Hence arise the excessiveness of taxation, 
the parliamentary corruption, and the frequent wars of 
that country. None of our constitutions intended to endow 
legislation with this power of regulating property, thus 
exercised in England, because its effects there demonstra- 
ted, that the moral principles upon which they were built, 
could not subsist in union with such a power ; and that it 
would have amounted to a provision in them all, for absolv- 
ing the government from the moral restraints previously 



84 THE LEGAL POLICY OJ? THE W. STATED 

imposed. But political parties have attempted to acquire 
it in imitation of the English precedents, (which will fo» 
ever be admired by men in power) as in the cases of a legal 
appreciation of paper stock far beyond the price at which 
it was purchased, of banks, and of the Yazoo report ; and if 
the system of changing the principles of a government by 
laws is not well understood by the people, they will go on, 
and at length make sales of national property to stockjob- 
bers, if stockjobbers will sell them support even in the form 
of a war. 

A legislative power of regulating wealth and poverty, is 
a principle of such irresistible ascendency, as to bring all 
political parties to the same standard, and to make it quite 
indifferent to nations, which shall prevail. It is the solu- 
tion in which is found the political identity of the whig and 
tory parties of England, in the exercise of power, during 
their highest state of acrimony j and in which this acrimo- 
ny was at length lost. 

It is matter of surprise that mankind should owe their 
greatest calamities to the two most respectable human cha- 
racters, priests and patriots, from a political gluttony, like 
that of swallowing too much food, however good. If re- 
sponsibility to God cannot cure priests of the vices which 
infect legislative parties of interest, what security lies in a 
responsibility to man ? If the love of souls cannot awaken 
integrity, laid to sleep by this species of legislative patron- 
age, will it be awakened by a love of wealth and power ? 
But nations have no right to complain, because they cor- 
rupt their priests and patriots by temptations, which human 
nature has never been able to resist. Our policy, rejecting 
a reliance upon either, because they are men, has endea- 
voured to exalt political law from a numerical form, 
into a science; and to substitute permanent principles for 
fluctuating passions. But if laws can distribute wealth and 
power* among individuals arranged in combinations to ac- 
quire both ; and if the fashion should prevail of scanning 
ihem by party comments,, and net by honest principles ; cur 



TSIE XEGAX POLICY OV THE IT. STATES, 585 

Veautiful experiment of confiding for a free government in 
good moral principles rather than in priests or patriots, will 
be exchanged for a confidence in stockjobbers and various 
other parties of interest. 

These parties plead patriotism to ignorance and credu- 
lity, and offer wealth and power to avarice and ambition. 
The most fraudulent is loudest in professions of zeal for 
the publick good, and like the Mississippi and South Sea 
projects, is often the most successful 5 because the vicious 
principle of creating wealth by law, having debauched the 
minds of the audience, no dishonesty appears to be attached 
to any excesses of legislative robbery. Audacity or delu- 
sion at length inculcates an opinion, that he who refuses to 
surrender his conscience and his understanding to some 
party, is a knave or a fool .; a knave, in pretending to hon- 
esty under a legislative distribution of wealth ; and a fool? 
for preferring hopeless efforts to serve the publick, to his 
own aggrandizement at the publick expense. Thus the max- 
ims taught by the legal intercourse between political and pe- 
cuniary parties reverse the dictates of common sense and 
common honesty. Knaves or fools only, surrender their 
duties and rights to party despotism. Knaves, to get a share 
in its acquisitions ; fools, because they are deceived. Can 
an honest man of sound understanding think himself bound 
by wisdom or duty, to give or sell himself to one of two par- 
ties, prompted by interest and ambition to impair the publick 
good ? Are men bound by wisdom or honour to take side 
with one of two competitors, if both are robbers or usurpers ? 
On the contrary, as neither could succeed except by dividing 
the national force between them, a nalion of fools only 
could be drawn into a division, in which (he. success of 
either party, is a calamity to a majority of hot?!. And as 
civil government affords wealth and power to a very small 
proportion of a nation, if those who reap ncilher from it, 
are seduced into an opinion that they ought to enlist under 
one of two small parties contending for both, they are only 
entitled to the same character, as being the instruments of 



586 THE XEGAl POLICY OE THE r. STATES. 

their own misfortunes, in all the- fluctuations of victory* 
Parties, like usurpers, acquire nothing from each other. 
The rich spoils of a gallant but deluded nation, were the 
fruits gathered by the whig and tory parties from the opin- 
ion — that it is knavery to adhere to the publick interest, and 
folly to exercise one's own judgement. Thus election, de- 
signed to advance this interest, is converted into an instru- 
ment for parties ; and that which is successful, hastens to 
reap the transitory harvest by legislative abuses, during the 
delirium of victory, uutil its crimes make room for a rival, 
equally unrestrained, which follows its precedents, repeats 
its frauds, and experiences its fate. By considering a zeal 
for party as more wise or honourable, than a zeal for good 
or bad laws, a nation is thus perpetually suspended in a 
state of political warfare, pregnant only with aggravations 
of calamity. 

Election in the United States becomes more contempti- 
ble than in England, when degraded by a legal power of 
regulating wealth and poverty, into a whig or a tory? a Pitt 
or a Fox, if it is seduced by a worthless maxim to commit 
the crime, for which the English parliament are wise 
enough to obtain a valuable consideration. It appoints the 
prime minister of our sovereignty. If like the corrupted 
English interests, which govern the appointment of theirs, 
It was well paid for its work ; or if like the king by whom 
this appointment is nominally made, it was lavishly endow* 
ed without expense to itself; it might boast of having sold 
its conscience and understanding for something solid : but 
to give away both, for a hollow notion of adhering to a 
party, that it may be fleeced and not bribed, would be an 
act of self abasement demonstrating that it was unable to 
distinguish between good and bad principles, and was of 
course flattered, despised and cheated. A sovereignty, po- 
pular or monarchical, ignorant of the principles by which 
it is preserved or destroyed, is first a cypher, then a tool, 
and finally the victim of its own servants. The folly both 
of a foolish people and a foolish king, consists in suffering 



TIIE iEGAi POLICY OF THE U. STATES. 587 

the attention to be diverted from the moral nature of the 
acts and laws of their servants, to the frivolous names and 
treacherous professions of contending parties and rival 
courtiers. 

The evil moral qualities of human nature, as natural to 
parties as to man, constitute the evidence in favour of re- 
straining them by good moral principles, and evince the 
absurdity, in every case, of losing these principles in a ca- 
reer after names, to be equivalent to that of shutting the 
eyes for the sake of substituting confidence for seeing, The 
political party which brought Charles the first to the block, 
made sundry good laws for checking the regal, hierarchical* 
and titled parties of interest, from which ths petition of 
right for repairing the usurpations of his two sons, extrac- 
ted all its merit. Yet it soon degenerated into a fraudulent: 
and oppressive party of interest itself. This case teaches 
us, that legislation can change the nature of a government, 
without changing its form ; that the numerical analysis, 
being unable to discern such changes, describes a govern- 
ment by the same name, after it has undergone a material 
change ; that without understanding the moral principles of 
laws, nations can neither foresee nor regulate revolutions;: 
and that neither party principles, merits nor names, are a 
good security for the continuance of party patriotism. 

The pigments of the human character, by which this 
last fact is exhibited, are so numerous, that ihc, habit of 
overlooking them is like the simplicity of a child, unable to 
recognise his own image. Eyes, seeing power eternally 
corrupting men, and minds, acting upon a, supposition that 
it does not, make up the foolish compound which has legis- 
lated for the world ; and the world has been enslaved. The 
patriots Csesar. Cromwell and Bonaparte, and the parties 
whig and tory, federal and republican, have acted and legis- 
lated alike, because men are influenced by power as all 
kinds of water are by rum. No name nor badge can enchant 
a man against a moral law impinging on his nature. If a 
partridge was called an ostrich, it would not save him from 



5SS THE LEGAL POLICY OF THE IT. STATES. 

the talon of the hawk ; nor can a man he shielded against 
the effects of power hy writing « patriot" on his forehead, 
Whenever, therefore, the popularity of parties or individu- 
als, shall free law from a strict examination at the tribunal 
of moral principles, a revolution is effected or at hand. 

The constitutional power of the president to influence 
the legislature by Ills patronage, and the unconstitutional 
practice of its members in influencing the election of a pre- 
sident, might be moulded into a powerful ally of a system 
of legislation, neither suggested nor examined by good 
moral principles. Its tendency is to weaken, and at length 
to destroy, the responsibility of the president to the people : 
to extend the corruption of patronage in the legislature, 
and to defeat the good effects designed to be produced by 
the division of power between tlie legislative and executive 
departments. By the constitution of Virginia, a patronage 
operates visibly upon the independence of that branch of 
the legislature, numerically inferior, because its members 
can Only gain the best offices in the state by the favour of 
the other. A cross patronage between the president and 
congress, more than doubles the operation of this mode of 
appointment against the principle of dividing power. In 
Virginia, the evil is mitigated by the absence of any execu- 
tive patronage over the members of the legislature. But if 
the president should become the patron of congress, and 
congress the patron of the president, checks would be con- 
verted into accomplices, and a secret and intricate conso- 
lidation of those divisions, intended to restrain legislation 
within the verge of good moral principles, would necessarily 
ensue. The political sect arising from this commerce, 
would resort to law to strengthen an evasion of the consti- 
tution. The obstacles against the institution of titled orders, 
would turn its attention towards the creation of parties of 
interest in other forms, to secure its power and gratify its 
wishes . And besides, all the artifices for inflaming the pas- 
sions of the vulgar, and bewildering the understandings of 
the igi^rait ; an identification of the government with the 



THE LEGAL POLICY GB THE t. STATES. 581* 

nation to free the party in power from responsibility ; a na- 
tional debt to chain the wealthy to the combination by the 
same strong ligament which binds them in France to Bona- 
parte ,* a direction of the publiek admiration to military men ; 
to reduce those most likely to oppose arbitrary laws, to a 
state of inferiority ; a neglect of the militia, under the doc- 
trine that it is unfit to resist foreign armies, so as to make 
it unable to resist domestick; a gradual reduction of the 
state governments to insignificance ; and a perpetual in- 
crease of the energy of government, under the pretext of 
extensive territory : being all within the scope of the pow- 
ers of the general government, will all be summoned to the 
aid of any combination between political departments ; and 
a power of regulating property by law would dig the 
fosse of corruption, and render the circumvallation for its 
defence, impregnable to its slaves. Against this host of 
dangers, no security occurs to me, except a strict scrutiny 
into laws and all the measures of government, by the light 
of good moral principles. 

Our policy has attempted to wrest war from the hands of 
executive power, lest it should be used as a means of making 
legislative an instrument for advancing its projects, and re- 
presentation a mask to conceal them. War is the keenest 
carving knife for cutting up nations into delicious morsels for 
parties and their leaders. It swells a few people to a mon- 
strous moral size, and shrivels a multitude to an equally 
unnatural diminituveness. It puts arms into the hands of 
ambition, avarice, pride, and self love, and aggravates these 
passions by erecting tlte holders into a separate interest, 
which without arms has in no shape been made just or ho- 
nest by the restraints of moral principles or didaetick pro- 
hibitions. It breeds a race of men, nominally heroes, mis- 
taken for patriots, and really tyrants. It enable knaves 
and traitors to delude the multitude into a belief that real 
patriots are knaves and traitors, and thus to force good men 
10 become the instruments of bad, to avoid the persecu- 
of this delusion. And without a sound militia, it is 



590 THE jLEGAL POLICY OF THE U. STATES. 

more dangerous to our policy than superstition, nobility, 
and exclusive privilege united ; because these could only sap 
it slowly, whilst that can carry it by storm. Hence this in- 
strument, so well adapted for its destruction, is attempted 
to be withheld from executive power. But no provisions 
enforce the prohibition, and no precautions against execu- 
tive intrigues with party spirit, the influence of patronage, 
nor the precipitancy of passion, are resorted to, The most 
trivial law is suspended for the president's concurrence, and 
the most trivial amendment of the constitution must receive 
a chaste national approbation ; but a law for war is absol- 
ved from this check, and unsubjected to publick opinion. 
Party legislation converts the constitutional precaution into 
an aggravation of the danger, and restores the knife to the 
president, freed from any responsibility for using it. Twen- 
ty six per centum of the legislature, being the dictators of a 
party predominancy of fifty one per centum, in virtue of the 
party loyalty spread by fashion over perjury and treason, 
like embroidery over putrescence, holds in fact the power 
of declaring war ; and political fashion, having thus dimin- 
ished the work for the blandishments of flattery, the preju- 
dices of party spirit, and the allurements of executive 
patronage, then covers the real authors of war against re- 
sponsibility, under the canopy of a fraudulent majority, and 
the justification of a national concurrence, drawn from a 
false appearance. The gradation of reasoning, " that each 
individual ought to be governed by the majority of some 
party ; that a majority thus obtained, is a genuine republi- 
can majority ; and that it is both the government and the 
nation," seizes upon the amiable and honest respect of the 
people for their representatives, and rewards them for their 
virtues by the calamities of a war, entered into contrary to 
the true wishes of themselves, and of those who have thus 
sacrificed a virtuous to a wicked allegiance. Other less 
important consequences of party allegiance might have been 
cited, to illustrate the impossibility of maintaining a free 
government, unless the uirnonty of a nation shall continu- 



THE LEGAL POLICY OF THE V. STATES. 591 

ail j try two parties struggling for wealth and power in a 
free government, not by prejudices and delusions, which 
these parties in their pleadings infuse, but by fixed moral 
principles. Being as corrupt as hierarchies or noble or- 
ders, and struggling for the same objects by which such 
parties are invigorated, they draw their qualifies from the 
same infusion ; and a nation divided between them in a con- 
stant political warfare, can only win by their alternate victo- 
ries that kind of liberty, to be reaped from a similar war- 
fare under the banners of an order of priests, and an order 
of nobles. 

Whilst the preservation of a federal form of government? 
dictated precautions against its subversion by political law, 
it is left exposed in a considerable degree to the \e\er of 
civil law and party spirit united. Had legislative chastity 
been secured against the addresses of executive patronage, 
and laws for making war been subjected to the concurrence 
of two thirds of the states, precautions better than those 
existing might have prevented the differences between the 
states, and alleviated the animosities between the parties, 
which seem better calculated to foster provincial hatreds, 
and the gradual approach of burdensome government, than 
wealth, happiness, and liberty* The (H da click state au- 
thority is no match for a power concentrated in a few hands, 
and able by law to make war, and to require " all the reve- 
nue a nation can pay." Add to this force the power of dis- 
tributing wealth by law, and the division of might between 
the general and state governments, would be well represen- 
ted by a giant armed with a scimitar, and an infant, with a 
needle. Heavy taxes, loaning, war and legal devices for 
distributing wealth and poverty* are the nn.-dern scalping 
knives, tomahawks artd rifles, used by avarice and ambition, 
because the more merciful weapons, superstition and nobil- 
ity, having been broken by knowledge, more cruel became 
necessary, to intimidate, or more expensive, to corrupt l;erj 
and mankind must hence suffer, on account of an accession 
of knowledge, an accession of oppression, or piously ac- 
re 



59 1 THE LEGAL FOLIC* GE THE U. STATES. 

knowledge the divine favour, by reaping from it the great- 
est of sublunary blessings. Legislation must either be 
restrained within the pale of good moral principles, by the 
exertion of this modern dispensation ; or it must more ex- 
tensively than ever resort to bad ones, to suppress its effects. 
And neither monarchy, faction, avarice or ambition, will be 
able hereafter to effect their ends in the mild modes of an- 
cient oppression, until ancient ignorance is restored, as was 
evinced by the revolutionary struggles and their termina- 
tion in France. 

Constitutions are often converted from tests for law, in- 
to snares for ignorance, by the ingenious verbal criticisms, 
to which the vices, the errours, and the passions of parties 
will often resort. If the single words " religion and re- 
publiek," are often made to cover superstition and tyranny, 
what party can fail to find shelter for any law under a long 
constitution ; but good moral principles cannot be made bad 
by words, nor bad, good. Constitutional powers, being all su- 
bordinate and subservient to the end of preserving a free and 
moderate government, do not admit of any constructions sub- 
versive of these ends. If a nation should erect a temple, and 
bestow on trustees powers for its preservation, no construc- 
tion of these powers could be correct, by which its pillars 
would be gradually weakened, and the edifice finally de- 
stroyed. Even no power expressly given, can be constitu- 
tionally used to defeat the intention for which it was given. 
Congress are empowered to raise armies and to borrow 
money; but by using one power to erect a military aris- 
tocracy, like the French, or the other to erect a stock aris- 
tocracy, like the English, they would be guilty of treason 
against the constitution, without violating its letter. 

In like manner, had an express power to grant charters 
been given to congress, it could only have been constitu- 
tionally exercised for the support of a free and moderate 
government, if this was the primary end of the constitution 
itself; and its use for the destruction of this end, would 
have been a real usurpation, by the help of a legal fraud, 



THE LEGAL POLICY OF THE V. STATES, 593 

If this reasoning is true, all aristocracies of interest, mili- 
tary, stock, ministerial, or parly, whether created by laws 
literally constitutional, by a patronage equally warranted, 
or by the struggles between the inns and outs under less 
faithful denominations, for the powers and profits of go- 
vernment, being hostile to the true principles of our policy, 
are really treasonable, and would at once appear to be so, if 
they were compared with the moral principles by which the 
constitution was constructed, and the end it had in view. 
Upon the same ground, the great legislative power bestow- 
ed by most of the state constitutions, would not suffice to 
justify the destruction of the primary end of these consti- 
tutions themselves, by any laws, however justifiable by their 
letter. The state and the general constitutions form but 
one system of policy. Trie spirit of this policy, to be only 
fairly drawn from an inspection of the whole, is adverse to 
aristocracy in every form, because it is not itself ah aristo- 
cratical spirit. All laws driving into our policy any portion 
of this new spirit, will drive out a correspondent portion of 
the old. But we are not left to infer from the general 
structure of those instruments from which we deduce our 
policy, whether its end was aristocraucal or not. Titles, 
exclusive privileges or advantages, so as to comprise com- 
pletely the ideas of personal and pecuniary aristocracies in 
all forms, are every where exclaimed against, for the pur- 
pose of closing the legislative door against all such modes 
of destroying our policy. And the success with which 
these positive inhibitions have been hitherto gotten over, by 
the constructions of parties of interest in some form, serves 
to demonstrate both the ineffieacy of political law to restrain 
such parties, and the necessity for ascertaining the principles 
which constitute a good or a bad government, as a test to 
which the people may resort for discovering the tendency 
of civil law. 

The laws for making that which was purchased for one 
shilling worth twenty, and for making these twenty worth 
thirty or forty, as stock in the bank of the United States j 



59b THE LEGAL POLICY OF THE U. STATES. 

exhibited so dazzling a degree of success in the legislative 
mode of becoming rich, -that all the objections against them 
as a mode of poisoning our policy, disappeared ; and our 
legislatures suddenly became staples for manufacturing 
anew the political wares broken to pieces by the revolution. 
If the English nation, at the accession of William of Orange, 
had restored to the crown the fraudulent prerogatives, for 
exercising which Charles bled and James was expelled, our 
legislatures would have had a precedent for reviving the 
monarchical policy of welding aristocracies of interest to 
our new r government in a thousand forms, by legal distri- 
butions of wealth at the publick expense. Privileges and 
monopolies, flowing from law, are of the same nature as if 
they came from prerogative, like the same poison poured 
from different phials. The English declaration of rights 
at the revolution, does not more explicitly condemn the op- 
pressions it corrects, than our state constitutions condemn 
the principle of creating aristocracies by legal privileges, 
This declaration is the most explicit acquisition obtained 
by that nation at the expense of much civil war, in favour 
of civil liberty, but its benefits have been defeated by mak- 
ing the statute book a receptacle for the same frauds which 
were formerly recorded in the archives of prerogative. An 
hundred laws to create an hundred aristocracies of interest, 
if they collect as much money, are the same to a nation, as 
an hundred of queen Elizabeth's monopoly grants. These 
laws require armies and penalties to defend them, live in 
the United States upon agriculture, and fear a militia. 

No government ever commenced its operations with so 
pliable a people, as that of the United States. Among their 
most firmly rooted principles, were an aversion for legal 
privileges, aristocracies of interest and standing armies 5 
and an affection for agriculture, commerce and the militia. 
By considering the effects of legal patronage upon the first 
triumvirate, and the effects of withholding it from the se- 
cond, its force upon national policy, and its capacity to pro- 
duce one evil as a cause for another, will be seen. A mill? 



THE LEGAL POLICY OE THE 17. STATES. 595 

ta^y Ration, received from the revolution, has been treated 
for thirty years with stockjobbing laws ; and by throwing 
awav three hundred millions during the same period upon 
a trilling standing army, without expending a shilling on 
the militia, an argument has been made against reposing in 
the latter awy future dependence. 

The difficulty of proving partial laws to be publick evils, 
increases as the fact becomes more obvious. As feudal 
castles and the monkish convents increased, they were 
thought to yield to nations more defence and more charity, 
as banks, by an increase of their paper, are said to add to 
their wealth. The people of England have rejected the 
defence of the castles, the charity of the convents, and now 
want bread in the most fruitful of all countries, though tot- 
tering under the wealth of paper stock. Such is the effect 
of enriching capital or cunning by law, of robbing talents 
and industry of their natural right to divide property, of 
conveying away national rights by irrepealable laws, and of 
repealing by laws constitutional principles. 

In England the crown lands, though alienated by absolute 
deeds, have been often resumed, as apublick right, without 
the power of the king to destroy. Laws for enabling char- 
tered aristocracies of interest to raise a revenue, impair the 
national ability to defend its liberty; deeds for alienating 
crown lands, only impaired the ability of a king to maintain 
his dignity ; perhaps his vices. For the first species of right, 
nations receive nothing ; the last was often sold by kings. If 
the alienation of a fourth of the crown lands was a deduction 
from the whole, ten millions collected under laws by aristo- 
cracies of interest from a national ability to pay forty, must 
be an equivalent deduction. Can law justly convey publick 
property to enrich aristocracies of interest or individuals, 
(publick services being out of the question) though it is for- 
bidden to prerogative, as too fraudulent and oppressive for 
monarchy ? Revenue is more clearly publick property and a 
publick right, than those crown lands. Unhappily for En- 
glandj her statesmen discovered, about a century, past, that it 



596 THE lEGAI POLICY 0£ THE tf. STATES. 

would sell much better. And after refusing to be defrauded 
of the crown lands by the term " prerogative," in an age more 
enlightened she has been deluded by the terms « charter 
and national credit," into sales of her liberty and property, 
under the usual pretexts of statesmen, but really to enrich 
parties of interest, to sustain ministries, and to feed viees 
tenfold in number, and similar in depravity, to those which 
caused the alienations of crown lands, 

The practice of legislation, in imitation of queen Eliza- 
beth, of selling charters of privilege, will suggest some 
remedy against reviving an old evil in this new mode ; ad 
though the same applause awaits the repeal of law char- 
ters, which lias been paid by all historians to her repeal of 
privilege charters, (because the receivers or purchasers of 
national rights, if they are exeuseable for the attempt to 
acquire, can never be admitted to have effected the acquisi- 
tion,) yet her precedent will rob it of the honour of ilrsi 
breaking down the barriers of private avarice, to come at 
the publick interest. 

" Common consent," Aristotle's definition of law, is only 
correct in reference to societies actually exercising the rigbt 
of self government. Force and fraud are in fact more 
frequently sources of law, than consent. Of this, the ar- 
gument, that a law should remain against common consent, 
because it had been enacted by it, is an eminent instance. 
Does it require a politician as crafty as the English judge 
who invented the mode of docking entails of land, to teach 
us how to dock entails of the errours, vices, follies and mis- 
fortunes of the dead upon the living ? Our common consent 
is expressed representatively, in a mode of feudal origin, by 
which dead, often legislates against the will of living con- 
sent. If the representative mind consists of three portions, 
one third can legislate against the will of two thirds ; if of 
two, one moiety legislates against the will of the other. 
Custom of feudal contrivance, hasted us not only into the 
practice of sustaining law against the consent of two thirds, 
or a moiety of the legislating mind, but even in the case 



THE LEGAL POLICY OF THE U. STATES. 597 

of the general government, to that of sustaining it against 
the consent of an entire legislative mind. 

The union is a compact between two distinct minds, state 
and popular. The two branches of its legislature, consist 
of the separate representatives of these two minds. Its 
health, peace, and perhaps its existence, depends upon the 
consent of both of *hese minds to law. If either could re- 
tain a law by which it had acquired an unforeseen superiori- 
ty over the other, the dissatisfaction of the ensnared party 
would ensue, and the law itself would be a violation of the 
federal compact. The constitution provides for the consent 
of both of these minds to law, and a feudal form has intro- 
duced a mode of making it, against the consent of one, and 
sometimes against that of both ; so that a portion of our 
laws are derived neither from consent, force, or fraud, but 
from the form of stating a question ; a source which Aris- 
totle himself has overlooked. 

In a state legislature, composed of two branches repre- 
senting one mind or body politick, a concurrence of some 
portion of this mind must attend the continuance of every 
law. In congress, the representatives of the state mind may 
prevent the repeal of law, which will then continue against 
the will of the entire popular mind, or against the will of 
the states, if the repeal is prevented by the popular repre- 
sentatives. Or if the repeal is prevented by the president, 
the law continues, somewhat equivocally on account of his 
representative character, against the will of both minds. 

A perfect consolidated government guided by the popu- 
lar mind, or a perfect federal government guided by the 
will of the states, would be very different from the existing 
general government. To prevent fraud or accident from de- 
stroying by means of law, the equilibrium between these con- 
tracting minds, as established by the constitution, both should 
be free, and neither able to retain an intended or accidental 
legal advantage over the other. If either of the political 
contracting parties composing the union, keeps the other 
subject to a law contrary to its will, it is equivalent to keep- 



B9S THE LEGAL POLICY OF THE XT. STATES*. 

ing the people of a state subject to a law, although the en- 
tire organ of their will should dissent therefrom. And if 
self preservation requires that this entire popular mind, 
should he able by its whole representative to repeal a law* 
the reason is equally cogent to prove, that each of the dis- 
tinct minds composing the union, should be able to exercise 
the same power by its similar organ. A power which 
holds another to law against its will, is dominant, and ine- 
quality or war must ensue* 

The danger from making law by form, contrary to prin- 
ciple, is greatest to the popular mind* It ought to be less ; 
because that is a natural being having natural rights, 
whereas the states are artificial beings having artificial 
rights only. But law is the engine of usurpation upon na- 
tural rights, to which the factitious beings called aristocra- 
cies, constantly resort* The contest between artificial and 
natural rights is never equal. One band of these comba- 
tants may win rich and substantial booty ; the other can 
win nothing. The reciprocity is as unequal in relation to 
the chance, as to the stake. The duration and small num- 
ber of the Senate, affords room for more concert and dexte- 
rity, in procuring and sustaining laws favourable to facti- 
tious interests, than can be practised by the house of repre- 
sentatives against them. 

A strict computation of chances is unnecessary to the 
argument. It is enough to shew, that out of an unprincipled 
form, the great social evils of disordering the equilibrium 
of the general government, and of quartering artificial 
burdens upon natural industry, may grow ; and that these 
evils are unattended by a chance of equivalent benefits. 

As law is the machine used by all factions and aristo- 
cracies of interest, for boarding and capturing both social 
and natural rights, an easy mode of recapture will discou- 
rage, whereas a difficult one excites efforts, never fraught 
with good to human happiness. An advertisement inform- 
ing a nation, that whatever can be gotten by legal frauds 
shall be sacred, will tend as much to the encouragement of 



THE LEGAL POLICY OF THE U. STATES. B99 

virtue, as one, that such acquisitions from social rights 
shall be suddenly reclaimed, would to the encouragement 
of vice. 

Let us view this subject by the light of moral and repub- 
lican principles. One branch of a legislature is not invested 
with a power of making law affirmatively, in a society ex- 
ercising self government, because it cannot express the 
common consent, on account of representing only a portion 
of it. If the reason for prohibiting it from making law by 
saving yes, is good, how can the same reason allow it to 
make law by saying no ? Shall a law continue ? Shall a law 
be repealed ? are the same questions in substance ; but 
English monarchy and feudality saw the advantages they 
would gain over the popular interest by the latter form. It 
would enable both to retain every encroachment upon popu- 
lar rights, by the affirmative will of either, under the garb 
of a negative erroneously supposed to be inefficacious* 
Trie pretence, that this negative was necessary in a govern- 
ment of orders, for the preservation of each, is exploded by 
discovering that such an end would have been much better 
effected by the principle, that no law should continue with- 
out the consent of all. This, in a government composed of 
three minds or three orders, would have been Aristotle's 
(( common consent." And whilst sucli a principle would 
have produced the common safety of these distinct political 
beings, it would have repressed the encroachments of either* 
hy affording a peaceable mode of self security to all, infi- 
nitely more effectual for the meditated end, than the civil 
wars produced by the defectiveness of the remedy resor- 
ted to. 

Republican and moral principles concur with the lan- 
guage of all our constitutions, in the opinion, that legisla- 
tures are divided into several branches, not to enable one 
only to make law against the will of two others, but to ob- 
tain a sounder expression of that common consent, which is 
the basis of law in a free government. Let us imagine 
these branches to be three, each consisting of an hundred 

77 



GOO THE LEGAL POLICY OF THK V, STATES. 

members ; why should one hundred be able to retain law 
against the will of two ? Suppose there had been only one 
legislative chamber of three hundred members; would 
the negative of one hundred members on the proposed re- 
peal of a law, have controlled the negative of the two hun- 
dred as to its continuance ? 

By our constitutions a power to legislate is bestowed, 
generally, upon several legislative branches ; but the legis- 
lature of Vermont consists of a single chamber. Bestowed 
cither upon several branches or this single chamber, it is 
an affirmative power. What reason can exist why this 
affirmative power should in substance be acquired by a moi- 
ety or a third of the legislature, when it consists of two or 
three branches, and be yet incapable of being acquired by a 
moiety or third of a legislature consisting of a single cham- 
ber ? Legislative power is bestowed on both in the same 
terms. Yet in consequence of the feudal form of putting 
a question, this moiety or third of the legislature constitu- 
ted in the first mode, makes law by retaining it ; whereas 
no such power can be exercised by the legislature constitu- 
ted in the second mode, although the powers given to both 
are precisely the same. 

Thus a body of men gains out of a form moulded by it- 
self and subject to its own pleasure, a power to legislate, 
bestowed neither by the constitution, nor by republican 
principles, nor even suggested by sound reasoning, in a go- 
vernment planted in a compromise between three orders. 
When the true question is " whether an old law shall con- 
tinue," the collateral question " whether a new law shall 
pass," important only from its incidental influence upon the 
true question, bestows upon a negative vote an affirmative 
power, or a substantial legislative power, which it could 
never exercise by voting affirmatively. And a negative 
upon a bill by one legislative branch, supersedes negatives 
upon the continuance of a law by two, in consequence of an 
arbitrary form, in a country whose policy it is, that law 
should be the genuine result of common consent affirmative- 
ly enunciated. 



THE XEGAL POLICY OF THE II. STATES. GOi 

This invention of the English orders, transplanted by 
Mind imitation into our policy, cannot be favourable to this 
policy, if it was favourable to those orders. But it may be 
highly favourable to all the legal aristocracies of interest, 
which may be created to subsist on the common interest, by 
impeding the recovery of national rights, conveyed in char- 
ters or laws fraught with privileges like those of queen 
Elizabeth. And if we should even so far violate the prin- 
ciples of our policy, as to reduce the people to the station 
of a demoeratick, and to exalt all the charter or privileged 
men, to that of an aristoeratick order, yet self preservation 
would require a negative in each upon law, as the only se- 
curity against the disorders, invariably produced in the best 
constructed species of political balance. It is particularly 
remarkable therefore, under a system of government, ac- 
knowledging the sovereignty of the people, and reprobating 
privileges and exclusive interests, that laws may be retained 
against the will of this acknowledged sovereignty, after they 
have been found to operate to a revolutionary extent, in 
favour of the reprobated principles. If the form, by which 
an anomaly so egregious has been ingrafted upon our policy, 
without (he concurrence of the sovereign we acknowledge, 
was skillfully contrived to vield advantages to the ennobled 
English orders, its introduction here is no proof of popular 
acuteness; and if this device is found there to be favourable 
to the sprouts from the principle of privilege or exclusive 
interest, in all the modifications produced by modern man- 
ners, its partiality to the family of factitious honour, ought 
not to excuse its partiality to the family of factitious wealth, 
in the eyes of a sovereign who must supply it. 

The numerical analysis is incompetent to the detection 
of real legislation, by an unconstitutional authority, under 
a negative ceremony ; but the moral will discern with ease, 
that it is pregnant with effects founded in bad principles, or 
at least in principles adverse <o those of our policy. It in* 
vests minorities and parties of interest, with a formidable 
power of retaining oppressive or fraudulent laws* which the 



602 THE LEGAL POLICY . OF THE U. STATES. 

majority and the publick interest, wish to repeal. It cor- 
rupts the outs or opposition, as well as the administrators 
of the government, because the leaders of both are equally 
liable to be annexed to some party of interest by wealth or 
ambition. And it combines together these rivals, for self 
preservation, so as to resemble an army, which the people 
could not disband except by its own vote, however its offi- 
cers may struggle with each other for command and lu- 
crative employments. 

Hence all aristocracies of interest contend, that it 
should be easy to pass laws, when we can only conjecture 
their consequences : and hard to repeal them, when these 
consequences are known ; and the sovereignty of the people, 
being persuaded that it is impregnably fortified by a nega- 
tive against unforeseen evils, and an inability to arrest such 
as it feels is gradually inclosed within a circle of long and 
perpetual laws, drawn by this negative magician; and finally 
becomes a pageant as powerless as the grand Lama ; whilst 
factitious interests become oppressors as tyrannical as his 
substitutes. 

Attempts to reconcile opposite principles are causes of 
party spirit and revolution. To sanction law by common 
consent or publick will, is one principle ; by the will of a 
combination among parties of interest, another. If the first 
principle can only prevent, whilst the other can retain 
fraudulent laws, it is obvious on which side lies the ability 
to make encroachments. One is armed with a power strict- 
ly defensive, and utterly incapable of conquest ; the other 
with a power of retaining every acquisition it can make, by 
its frequent and sudden inroads upon the territory of its 
honest and peaceable neighbour. 

The unsettled question in relation to the right of in- 
struction, aggravates the evil of minority legislation, and 
the moral right of self government is defeated in both 
eases by form and ceremony. In one, the mode of putting 
a question confers on minorities a legislative power withheld 
by the constitution ; in the other, the mode of giving the 



THE LEGAL POLICY OE THE U. STATES. 60S 

instruction, is also used to confer on the representative a 
power of legislating contrary to the will of bis constituents ; 
and yet both the minorities and the representatives acknow- 
ledge a moral obligation to be bound by the wills they 
respectively defeat. Although a nation holding extensive 
territory, resorts to district election, as the only possible 
jnode of acquiring the benefits of representation, it cannot 
exercise, it is said, the inherent right of instructing its 
agents, in the same practicable mode. Had the division of 
election, heretofore celebrated among the moral beauties 
of our policy, been rejected, representation must also have 
been banished from it. Aggregate instruction is as imprac- 
ticable as aggregate election. But supposing that both or 
either could have been effected, it was not desirable, if the 
principle of division is as salutary in restraining the pas- 
sions of the multitude as the powers of a government. And 
although it is alleged that the risque of re-election is a suf- 
ficient substitute for the right of instruction, it is an argu- 
ment so analogous to the notion of thieves, *• that the 
risque of the gallows justifies the theft," as hardly to de- 
serve refutation upon the still stronger ground, that it would 
deprive nations of self defence whilst their ruin was effect- 
ing, upon a speculation quite useless after it is accomplished. 
A combination among parlies of interest, founded upon the 
negative mode of legislation, thus absolved from the super- 
vision and restraint of instruction, might continue legal 
tyranny fraudulently or accidentally introduced, against the 
will of a nation and of the majority of its representatives, 
if it possesses no practicable mode of instruction ; and its 
own money would at the same time pay the cost of treason 
and be used in corrupting election itself. 

Liberty, like religion, is lost by planting it in dogma. 
Roman Catholick Christianity was corrupted by heathen 
ceremonies. The United States have burst through the 
political superstitions of church and state, and protection, 
and allegiance, into the principle of national right to make 
and alter national laws ; and boast of constitutions calculi^ 



604 TKE LEGAL POLICY OF THE IT. STATES* 

ted to prevent legislatures from introducing legal oppres- 
sion. Yet we see them suffering law, from a superstitious 
veneration for a feudal ceremony, highly favourable to the 
objects of all aristocracies of interest, which will use it to 
secure the species of property arising from legal frauds, by 
Inculcating an opinion, that it is dangerous to ameud con- 
stitutions. Such an opinion deserves consideration, as a 
powerful ally of the two forms, by which the negative of a 
minority retains obnoxious laws, and the only practicable 
mode of instruction, is disqualified for restraining perfidious 
agents. 

As the human mind is unable to foresee or to provide 
against its own devices ; a code of political law, is as unable 
to provide completely for the safety of publick rights, as a 
code of civil, for private. Perhaps this is making too great 
a concession to the adversaries of amending constitutions, 
and that it might with justice be asserted, that it is much 
more difficult to foresee and restrain the arts of cunning 
politicians, aided by means infinitely greater, than these of 
ignorant, disunited individuals. 

Suppose a legislature appointed to prepare a code of 
civil law, to be dissolved upon a supposition that the work 
was perfected. If crimes and evasions, unforeseen and un- 
provided against, should occur, who would contend that it 
would ruin the nation, should it appoint another legislature 
to correct these crimes and evasions ? Criminals and so- 
phists. Ought nations to hallow guilt or errour by suffering 
the evils they cause ? 

The temptations to violate political law are greater, and 
the danger of punishment less, than in the case of civil 
law. In one case, wealth and power are solicitors for 
crime; in the other, temptation is comparatively trivial, 
and the spectre of punishment stares it in the face. Will 
the terror of the gallows seduce men to violate civil law, 
and the allurement of wealth and power deter them from 
violating political, so that the stratagems of theft must be 
eternally met by new remedies, whilst those of avarice and 



THE LEGAL POLICY OF THE IT. STATES. 005 

ambition will never require them ? If a party should per- 
suade a nation to make no more laws against fraud, would 
it not be considered as a band of thieves ? The illustration 
of the opinion " that it is dangerous to devise new remedies 
against avarice and ambition," by tbe idea of prohibiting 
amendments or additions to civil law, is too feeble. Indivi- 
duals would retain the right and the power of self defence, 
against injuries from individuals, for which the civil code 
provided no remedy ; but all aristocracies of interest, or 
combinations of avarice and ambition, work their ends with 
civil law, against which a nation has no remedy, if amend- 
ments or additions to political law should fall into disuse. 
Wherever the idea of political law exists, frequent charges 
will be laid before the people against those in power, for 
violating it ; and as these charges will seldom want some 
foundation, they will sometimes cause the nation to transfer 
the reins of government to the accusers ; but they seldom 
or never produce any effectual new political law, because 
the accusers, by acquiring power, are converted into an 
aristocracy of interest ; at least to the extent of the univer- 
sal desire to hold good offices ; and instantly become more 
inclined to extend this power by the help of the precedents 
of their predecessors, than to contract it, by declaring these 
precedents to be unconstitutional or fraudulent. 

The policy of the United States is attached to the idea 
of a government contrived for dispensing benefits equally, 
(the case of payment for publick services excepted) and ad- 
verse to all partial dispensations. In an extensive country, 
conventions (as we understand the term) are the only guar- 
dians of this policy, and civil law is every where the chief 
or only instrument by which it is destroyed. A rejection 
of its creator and guardian, and a confidence in its destroy- 
er, would be a revival of the policy by which mankind are 
universally enslaved. 

Legal prescience must for ever remain imperfect, be- 
cause the evolutions of the human mind can never be limi- 
ted. How can unchangeable constitutions manage this 



80S THE XEGAL POLICY 0? THE V. STATES. 

proIHick being? It leaves every thing behind which does not 
move with it, except mere matter, and hence laws thus for- 
saken are called " a dead letter." When the mind, upon 
which a constitution was calculated to operate, is gone, 
though it may exist embalmed in the statute book like mag- 
na charta, it exists in the repose and nullity of a mummy. 
If a moiety of national moral character is changed, then an 
unchanged constitution would be half dead, and the remain- 
der would be in the state of a living twin, united to a dead 
one. A constitution cannot be kept alive, or efficient, ex- 
cept by connecting it with a living national character ; this 
is not to be done in any other mode, than that of extending 
its remedies to new inventions and living abuses, before they 
gain strength to defy reformation. A neglect of this pre- 
caution by political, and a constant use of it, by civil law, is 
the cause of the difference between the danger of altering 
these two kinds of law. Attempts to reform abuses of long 
standing, generally terminate like those of the emperor 
Pertinax or of the French jacobins. When civil war is the. 
reformer, it is apt to forget its business, and to create more 
cause for reformation than it removes. When the funding 
invention, which has nearly destroyed the political weight 
of the English nobility, and wholly overwhelmed that of the 
landed interest, or interest of industry, was in its infancy, 
this species of revolution, net provided against by magna 
charta (considering that instrument in the light of a consti- 
tution) might have been arrested by an addition to the po- 
litical code ; but now the English nation is forced to live 
under the oppressions of this modern invention, only to ag- 
gravate the evils to be suffered at its death. 

The idea " that it is wrong to correct wrong," is illus- 
trated by the errours it engrafted on Christianity in the 
church of Rome, and the injury that church thereby sus- 
tained. If revelation can be corrupted and its end defeated 
by civil laws, how can a constitution, contrived by human 
wisdom, be safe against the ambition and avarice of parties 
and individuals ? It is better illustrated by the usual coinei- 



THE LEGAL POLICY QT THE V. STATES. &0t 

dence, between an enmity to the idea of the perfectibility of 
man, and an enmity to a removal of constitutional defeats* 
Those who can see the absurdity of the notion of his per- 
fectibility, can discover the perfection of his foresight. 
However inconsistent such opinions may appear, both are 
consistent with their motive* Improvement, the best evi- 
dence of man's imperfection, is suppressed, whilst that im- 
perfection is exaggerated, for the purposes of taking advan- 
tage of his oversights, and subjecting him to hard govern- 
ment, under pretence of restraining his vicious nature, but 
really to defend these vicious advantages* 

The most immoral motives contend most loudly for the 
capacity of human nature, to turn out of its hands a perfect 
moral work* All priesthoods assert the perfection of the 
dogmas under which they ^et wealth and honour. Magna 
eharta, that machine for any kind of political work, has 
been equally praised by a haughty nobility and rebellious 
mobs ; a papistical and a protestant episcopacy ; sound and 
rotten borough representation; annual, triennial and septen- 
nial election ; a militia yeomanry and a mercenary army ; 
and moderate and stock taxation. Avarice, ambition ami 
self interest, are loud in proclaiming the perfections of the 
principles of a government, in proportion to their own vio« 
lation of these principles, A representation in England, 
designed to shield the people against oppression, has been 
gradually changed into a representation to shield oppression 
against the people. Whatever objections* therefore, lie 
against conventions, they are to be balanced against a tame 
surrender of the right of making political law, to fraud and 
corruption. Their certain tyranny is more terrible than 
this modern experiment, tc which we are indebted for all 
the political good we enjoy. 

As good and evil are natural eicmies, eternal warfare 
must esisi in the moral world, and the combatant which 
desists from hostility must be subdued. Good, too often 
falls into this errour ; evil, seldom or never. Hence the 
first is more liable to lose the fruits of victory. Upon poll- 

78 



tiQS THE LEGAL 1'OLICY OF THE 17. STATE*. 

tical success, it has hitherto established a wise nuiuericaf 
form of government, as it supposed, formed a didactick lec- 
ture for this government to govern itself by, and thrown 
away its arms. These are seized by the foe, forged into 
the shape of civil law, and turned against the late victor ;' 
and it soon appears (hat armed sinners are an overmatch 
for unarmed saints. — -The control of nations over govern- 
ments, can only consist of political law, enforced by good 
moral principles* A dread of conventions, enables govern- 
jnents to make polkical law to control nations. They are 
compelled to do it, if nations will not, to provide for new cir- 
cumstances. Thus the design of political law is reversed, 
and its power for preserving a free government, destroyed. 

A nation must keep and use an unlimited power over its 
government, or a government must acquire such a power 
over a nation. The question ia fact lies between the genu- 
ine political law of conventions ; and the spurious, made by 
the frauds of parties of interest, aided by the form of re- 
pealing civil laws. 

It is an old question. Conventions are discredited for 
the same reasons, which caused kings, courtiers and pubiiek 
harpies, to discredit parliaments, whilst they checked fraud 
and oppression. We have seen in Filiner and other court 
writers, ail the arguments against parliaments, or their fre- 
quency, now used against conventions. Parliaments were 
feared, whilst they nurtured liberty and corrected abuses. 
Their meetings are no longer deprecated, because this fear 
is removed by corruption. And an apprehension of con- 
ventions in the United States is in like manner a testimonial, 
both of the eminent virtues they have so often displayed, 
and of the great abuses which have already eluded their 
authority. 

jf our allotment of political law to national conventions, 
and of civil to governments, so essential for the preserva- 
tion of liberty, ennnot be legitimately defeated by an entire 
government, the enormity, committed by the creature and 
dependant of a ^averainentj must be flagrant. Judicial de- 



THE LEGAL POLICY OF THE If, STATES. 609 

eisions, in spite of every precaution, might impair am! un- 
dermine the principles of any constitution, against the wilj 
both of the nation and the government, nor is there any suf- 
ficient remedy against such an evil, except additional poli- 
tical law. The absence of any check against this mode of 
changing constitutions, displays the errour of considering 
election, singly, as a sufficient sponsor for a free govern- 
ment. It is itself the child, the creature and the instrument 
of political law, amidst whose numerous progeny it occupies 
but one, though an important station. If self government 
or political law should yield all its rights and all its power 
to election, like the parent who transfers his whole estate to 
a favourite child, it would first become contemptible, and 
then die forgotten. 

An ignorance of conventions and political law, and an 
unlimited confidence in election, have heretofore defeated the 
hopes of all the fabricators of free governments. Election, 
both legislative and executive, has heen uniformly corrupted 
by parties of interest, political or pecuniary. In Rome, and 
m Italy during the three centuries quoted by Mr. Adams, 
hy patrician orders. In England, first by feudal barons, 
then by the papal hierarchy, and now by the ministerial 
and stock parties of interest. These cases shew that aris- 
tocracies of interest in all shapes, titled or untitled, can 
hammer election into a political machine, resembling a cu- 
rious knife said to have been invented by ingenious thieves, 
for cutting purses from pockets, without alarming the own- 
ers. Whig election passed the septennial law in England, 
and party aristocracy debauched even Addison into a stren- 
uous vindication of this atrocious usurpation. Elective re- 
sponsibility passed a law in Virginia in 1779, declaring "that 
" it was inconsistent with the principles of civil liberty, and 
<" contrary to the rights of the other members of the socie- 
" ty, that any body of men therein should have authority to 
*< enlarge their own powers, prerogatives or emoluments, 
*' and that the General Assembly cannot, at their own will, 
** increase their allowance.'* And near twenty years after 



810 THE J.EGA1 POLICY OF THE U. STATES* 

wards, in the true spirit of a party of interest, it added fifty 
per centum to its own wages. This addition, and the recir 
ted law, stand unrepealed to this day, as evidences of ths 
feebleness of constitutional or political law, made by gc? 
vernments ; and the ineffieacy of election, singly, to pie- 
serve the plainest principle of civil liberty, But the elec- 
tion of conventions is a different thing* It looks for different 
qualities ; it is not bribed by hopes of money or office ; its 
offspring cannot bestow either on itself, and its life is too 
short to admit of corruption, or to reap power and wealth 
from the political law it enunciates, like a government. 

It is universally allowed that forms of government are 
liable to decay. Without repair, decay terminates in de- 
struction. A constitution must therefore die in the com- 
mon course of nature, unless it eludes the scythe of death* 
for ever in the hands of fraud and ambition, by occasional 
restoratives. However proudly the English form of go- 
vernment at one period reared its head above its rivals, pa- 
triots now contemplate it, as travellers do the ruins of Pal- 
myra. Its vital faculty is gone, though an interesting 
skeleton remains ; but its resurrection in its purest form 
"would now cause a degree of terror, something like what is 
expected at the day of judgement. 

Mr. Adams's theory, and all others adverse to conven- 
tions, must establish the constancy of human opinion, or fail. 
"Was this supposed constancy a fiction whilst he was a dis- 
ciple of Nedham, and does it become a truth, now that he 
has changed into an enemy to this author ? Can that nature 
be constant, which is to day ardent for democracy, to-mor- 
row, for monarchy r Is not a capacity for improvement 
inconsistent with the attribute of constancy ? Can unchange- 
able constitutions, be adapted for a being changeable and 
corruptible ? Would an entire nation, as accomplished as 
Mr. Adams, require the same form of government as a na- 
tion of savages ? If the moral nature of man is inconstant* 
how is this inconstancy to be controlled or nourished, in 
order to preserve a free government, except by new politir 



THE LEGAL POLICY OF THE tf. STATE 3. 611 

eal law ? It is unavoidable. The only question is, whether 
it shall be enacted openly by conventions, or covertly by 
governments. 

The whole family of aristocracies of interest, deprecate 
the frequency of conventions, on account of the imperfec- 
tions of human nature. " Man is man," exclaim they • 
slyly insinuating, by the manner of the exclamation, that 
he is nearly a devil. To keep this devil in order, hierarchy 
contends that he ought to be cheated by superstition ; 
monarchy, that he ought to be lashed by despotism ; aris- 
tocracy, that he ought to be pilfered by privileges : and par- 
ties of interest, that he is fair game for all fraudulent laws. 
And forsooth, because man is man. And why not lash these 
Ijishers of man themselves into the path of moral rectitude, 
by political law. A good huntsman lashes his worst dogs 
into the right trail. "Why should some men shrink from the 
mild discipline of justice, whilst they prescribe to others 
tlie cruel severities of fraud and oppression? Oh ! say all 
parties of interest, with great solemnity, the laws for gra- 
tifying our avarice and ambition, are necessary to make 
other men good, or to keep them in order. 

Thus thin is the delusion under which tyranny is con- 
cealed from the good, and perpetrated by the bad. And as 
Indians assume a new disguise when their prey detects the 
old. the centuries employed in emptying pockets under pre- 
tence of saving souls, may possibly be repassed in the same 
business, under the still grosser pretence of filling them. 
Conventions, alarmed by the first fraud, have expelled 
priests from legislatures ; and legislatures, participating in 
the second through the channels of avarice or ambition, 
have colonised them with stockjobbers and legal arti- 
ficial interests of every description. By political law, 
a paper instrument, to which no income is attached, is sup- 
posed to create a dangerous separate interest ; by civil, a 
paper instrument, bestowing an enormous annual income, is 
supposed to create none. The pretended enemies of Mr. 
Adams's system of political Jaw, separate interests warily 



<MS THE LEGAL POLICY OF THE V. STATES 

balanced, throw open all the avenues to power in favour of' 
eivil law, separate interests without cheek, and furnished 
with the artillery which has demolished even his best con- 
trived balances. A pecuniary separate interest, unchecked 
by some coequal power to which its growth might be dan* 
gerous, constitutes the most oppressive conceivable species 
of government, because it collects private wealth for itself 
from the people by its own laws ; and it will loudly depre- 
cate conventions, because the abuse admits of no other 
remedy. 

Such arguments as assail conventions, have been sug- 
gested by the same motives, against every moral improve- 
ment, to which the present age is indebted for all the hap- 
piness it enjoys. Christianity was dangerous in the opinion 
of pagan priests. Galileo's speculations were dangerous in 
the opinion of the Pope. Toleration is dangerous in the 
opinion of established churches; and conventions are dan- 
gerous in the opinion of every seperate interest. Yet 
Christianity prevailed ; Galileo's principles triumphed ; 
toleration exploded persecution ; and conventions bestowed 
upon the United States the best practical government which 
has hitherto appeared. 

All craftsmen, or parties of interest, exclaim « that 
human nature is too imperfect to avail itself of the princi- 
ples of political morality." Ought idolatry to have defeat- 
ed Christianity by the same argument ; or are the principles 
of Christianity less perfect than those of political morality ? 
Oris human nature eapable of being benefitted by good re- 
ligious, but not by good political principles ? Let prejudice, 
zeal and interest jointly answer these questions. There is 
no opinion more injurious to mankind, than 6i that virtuous 
nations only can maintain a free government." It enlists on 
the side of despotism all persons of a misanthropick turn of 
mind, by a computation of the human character, founded in 
a casual complexion, and liable to be false ; and which 
would not justify the inference, if it was true. It enlists 
industrious men under the same banner, by terrifying them 



THE LEGAL POLICY OF THE U. STATES. MB 

•with the consequences of indulging vicious beings with 
liberty. It cuts off the hope of improving the morals of 
mankind, by excluding the most successful preceptor. And 
it excludes the remedy against abuses, by asserting that it 
must fail, if the nation is not virtuous. Without losing time 
in shewing, that the difficulty of ascertaining the prevalence 
of national virtue or vice ; and whether it is natural or arti- 
ficial ; and the want of a standard for fixing the quantity 
able to maintain good, or requiring bad government, leaves 
the position in a state of generality, incapable of being proved 
or disproved ; I shall upon other grounds advert again to 
this doctrine, on account of its special hostility to the 
conventional mode of preserving good political principles. 
Which is the best defender of human rights, virtue or 
wisdom ? Cannot an individual maintain his rights unless 
he is virtuous ? Behold the virtuous fool and the wise 
knave. If a philosopher should run through the world ex- 
claiming to every vicious man he met, « Sir, you cannot be 
free, because you are vicious ; the best thing you can do lid 
to become my slave," would he make one proselyte ? Would 
he be thought a maniaek or an apostle ? Why has the same 
egregious absurdity, preached by politicians, succeeded 2 
Simply because it was favourable to abuses, frauds, parties 
of interest, and tyranny in every form. All associations, 
chartered and unchartered for trade, city government, 
banking, and speculations of every kind, earnestly preach 
and sedulously in practice, contemn this doctrine. They rely 
upon wisdom and republican principles for the security of 
their own rights, and deny the efficacy of the same security 
in respect to national rights, because of a defect cf virtue 
in a nation, of which they compose a portion, not more vir- 
tuous than the rest. They are perpetually calling partner- 
ship and separate interest conventions, in order to make use 
of their wisdom to defend legal or chartered privileges, to 
advance private interest, and to Annoy the publiek ; but they 
will not allow nations to use their wisdom for self defence 
in the sam# mode, because they want driue. Jf wisdoaa 



&£$ THE 3LEGAL TOXIC Y 0$ THE T7. STATES* 

and strength enables individuals to maintain their rights? 
why may not social rights be maintained by the same agents? 
Is it virtue which enables one nation to conquer another, or 
a treacherous faction to enslave their own country ? Virtue 
could not protect the Roman Senators against the swords of 
the Gauls, and vice can see that eleven men can control 
the tyranny of one. If minorities often make themselves 
tyrants by wisdom,, why may not nations preserve (heir 
liberty by it ? Why do all minor societies find wisdom and 
republican principles, the best securities against their own 
vices, if ihcy are no check upon national vices ? Why are 
conventions useful to them, and pernicious to nations ? And 
why arc additional conventional laws necessary for the safe- 
ty of sub-societies, but not for national safety ? The solution 
of these inconsistencies is short and plain. Conventions, 
wisdom, and republican principles, are the best controllers 
of vice hitherto discovered. All sub societies, therefore, 
use them to restrain the vices of their own members. But 
they are not willing that nations should use them, for the 
same reason hy which they are induced to do it* Being 
themselves the least virtuous members of every nation* they 
are unwilling to suffer the control they carefully inflict. 
To this cunning and self interest mankind are indebted for 
the doctrine, " that they cannot be free unless they are vir- 
tuous." Whereas the fact is, that virtue may be more safe- 
ly dispensed with in a national convention, than in an infe- 
rior association, or in an individual ; because wisdom in the 
first case is exposed to no temptation to vice, as it can dis- 
cern no object to defraud or oppress ; whereas such objects, 
in abundance, assault the wisdom of exclusive interests. 
Wisdom is of no use without will, and national will with us 
can only be expressed by conventions, or additional political 
law. By withholding from a nation the use both of its w is- 
dom and will, it must become a statue, and some aristocra- 
cy of interest, a Prometheus, who will animate it with such 
civil law as he pleases, but never inspire it with celestial 
fire, 



THE LEGAL TOXICY OE THE IT. STATES. &t$ 

Conventions are the remedy against the erronr of trust- 
ing to some dogma for a free government, and against the 
danger of despair, whenever this dogma is exploded. That 
liberty cannot exist without virtue, that it depends upon edu- 
cation, and that it is graduated by skilfully balancing the 
members of the numerical analysis, are among the most spe- 
cious and the most pernicious. By making virtue a necessary 
antecedent to a free government, their natural moral order 
is transposed, and the prospect for both is diminished. 
Those moral principles upon which every fair association, 
political or private, must be built, constitute in their opera- 
tion a school for virtue, by the restraints or responsibilities of 
which justice to associates is enforced, whilst morality is 
impressed by habit. No opinion could be inculcated more 
fatal to a science, than that it must precede instruction. 
The second dogma is more dangerous, as containing a great- 
er portion of truth ; because education is undoubtedly one of 
the sources of wisdom, although it might be fatal to a nation* 
to mistake it for wisdom itself. Comparisons between the 
Augustan, and some early age of the Roman Commonwealth; 
between some Gothick age, and that of Lewis the 14th of 
France; between England and France ; and between Scotland 
and the United States; would demonstrate that free govern- 
ment was not graduated by education* The refutation of 
the third, as infinitely the most dangerous, has been the 
chief object of these essays ; for although Mr. Adams him- 
self has proved it to have been the most unfortunate of ail 
in practice, he has persuaded himself that it is the most per- 
fect in theory* 

Mr. Godwin has said, " that a scheme of national cdu- 
" cation is the most formidable and profound contrivance for 
" despotism that imagination can suggest;'!* and hence con- 
cludes that education ought to be left to itself. The philo- 
sophick, as well as the religious fanatiek, must be detected* 
to come at practical truth. If education is ih's powerful 

*Pol..Jus.vol.2.p.298. 



\ 

816 THE LEGAL POLICY OF THE U. STATES* 

instrument, liberty, by foregoing its use, would experience 
the same fate, as she would suffer from surrendering to 
despotism the exclusive use of fire arms. And as these* 
however dangerous to liberty, united with the invention of 
standing armies, may be made subservient to her safety by a 
good militia system, so a good system of education, would 
ssnd large contributions into that reservoir of materials, of 
which knowledge is compounded. The superstitious mode 
of trial by battle, would have been rendered too ridiculous 
even for its Gothick sera, by allowing to one, and withhold- 
ing from the other combatant, the most formidable weapon 
which imagination could suggest. Neither philosophers 
nor priests will ever be able so far to change the materials 
of human nature, as to invest one with the powers of all. It 
is difficult to form education into a despot hy precept ; for 
however undisciplined the militia of man's other powers 
may be, education will constantly lean towards their regula- 
tion. But if a fraudulent system of education and a mer- 
cenary army, can bestow long life upon a tyrannical form 
of government, it is probable that a just system of education 
and a sound militia, would perpetuate a free one. "Why 
should auxiliaries so powerful to a bad cause, be renounced 
by a good one ? Wisdom will work for vice as well as for 
virtue. The rulers of the civilized world at this time, pos- 
sess a far greater portion of knowledge, than the individu- 
als composing a nation could ever acquire ; some displaying 
its effects under the tutelage of political law, and others its 
effects under no such restraint. And a comparison be- 
tween these effects is a decisive proof, both that Mr. God- 
win's idea of extracting from wisdom unrestrained by politi- 
cal law a free government, is chimerical j and also that this 
restraint, imposed by national wisdom, causes the wisdom of 
governoursto be infinitely more subservient to publiek good* 
The facts on both sides go to demonstrate the impossibility 
of national freedom, if nations, by losing the custom of enac- 
ting and enforcing political law, should suffer this right to 
be gradually usurped by their governments. The doctrine, 



THE LEGAL POLICY OF THE U. STATES. 6if 

t' that school masters can keep us out of tyranny, so as to 
enahle nations to dispense with political law," is a depen- 
dence like that upon priests, to keep us out of purgatory. 
But if a mode of education, like a standing army, can change 
the nature of a government, and constitute the most formi- 
dable contrivance for despotism, a nation, to preserve its 
liberty, must have wisdom enough to influence tlsis moral 
mode of destroying it, just as it must control a standing 
army, for the same purpose, by the superior physical force 
of a militia. Education must be supervised by the same 
vigilant national wisdom necessary to defend liberty against 
whatever can be used to destroy it ; and the same care must 
be taken to prevent it from being converted into an instru- 
ment by a sect, religious, political or chartered, as to with- 
hold from avarice and ambition the use of a standing army. 
The benefits derived by mankind from academical institu- 
tions, though fettered or corrupted by despotism or super- 
stition, are a pledge for their effect when nurtured by the 
principles of a free government. How great is our debt to 
those of Athens only, during a short period ! The objection 
to an expense, of which a proportion falls on those who can 
receive no part of the education, would be stronger against 
publick taxes to support government, because many more 
people participate in the good effects of academical institu- 
tions, than in the salaries or benefits of publick offices. An 
augmentation of knowledge always dispenses some good to 
the whole nation, whereas the majority frequently suffers 
much evil from certain modes of civil government. The ac- 
cess to wealth and power is widened by education, and con- 
tracted by its absence, because genius, however poor, will ac- 
quire knowledge if it is introduced into a country, just as the 
art of weaving has spread from a few looms throughout the 
civilized world. A publick patronage of a few good colhv 
ges, is therefore a patronage of genius ; ami as the chance 
for it is equal among all, the poor, from their superiority of 
number, will draw most prizes in the lottery of knowledge, 
established by means of colleges, chiefly supported by the 



618 THE XEGAL POLICY OF THE U. STATES. 

rich. It is only necessary to chasten academical institutions 
by the same good moral principles necessary to make a good 
government. To establish responsibility ; to make income 
depend on merit ; and to banish offices for life, sinecure, 
salaries, and idle, vicious, or incompetent functionaries. 

The difference between knowledge and education is cer- 
tainly considerable. We often find most liberty attached to 
the inferior stock of education, but we should be able to 
discern a more equal distribution of knowledge attached to 
it Without attempting to reconcile theory and fact in such 
cases, it is sufficient to observe, that civil laws contrived to 
dispense knowledge to parties, sects, or exclusive interests 
of any kind, and ignorance to the majority, are precisely of 
the same nature with those contrived to dispense wealth and 
poverty in the same way. A wise clergy and an ignorant 
laity, or a wise stock interest and an ignorant agricultural 
interest, produce the same consequences as any other rich 
and poor orders or interests. Either molten or printed im- 
ages can forge and fix fetters. Hence it behooves a nation 
having wisdom enough to be free, to supervise the conduct 
of its government by conventions, and to prevent a fraudu- 
lent management of education, as well as of property, by 
civil laws, for the purposes of fostering parties of interest, 
defending fraud, and maintaining despotism. 

In the United States, agriculture covers the interest of 
a vast majority. Whatever civil laws pass for distributing 
knowledge of wealth, operate against her ; because being 
the mother which suckles all other interests, her own chil 
dren cannot suckle her. Our landed interest corresponds 
with the tenantry of England, being composed, generally, 
of cultivators. The English landlords are satisfied with a 
policy which distributes wealth and knowledge by civil 
laws, because they are themselves the chief objects of its 
fraudulent bounty, and their tenants the chief assignees of 
ignorance and poverty. The gross errour of the American 
agricultural interest, in imagining itself to bear a resem- 
blance to the English landlord interest., may beguile it into 



THE LEG AX POLICY OF THE V. STATES. 619 

the English system of legislating ways and means for ex- 
tracting wealth from labour, and of course leaving it igno- 
rance ; but if it should, our cultivators will voluntarily inflict 
on themselves the evils, under which the English tenantry 
unwillingly groan. Laws for dividing landed, and accumu- 
lating legal wealth, will also convey mean talents to real, 
and splended to artificial property ; and the effects of moral 
superiority inevitably follow. Even laws with the specious 
object of diffusing education, may be contrived to distribute 
knowledge and ignorance, so as to establish the power of 
legal aristocracies of interest. It is easy to educate agri- 
culture and labour at their own expense, sufficiently for 
submission, but insufficiently to balance or control the high 
moral accomplishments bestowed upon aristocracies of inte- 
rest, as an appurtenance of the wealth transferred to them 
from agriculture and labour by fraudulent laws. Projects 
of tills kind will be used to conceal from the mass of a na- 
tion, the undeniable truth, that no such experiments can 
save its liberty, whilst laws exist for creating factitious 
wealth ; because all parties will use such a legislative pow- 
er to produce great inequalities of wealth, and this wealth 
will carry with it those talents which guide all civilized go- 
vernments, though all the rest of the nation should receive 
ordinary educations. 

The idea of equalising knowledge, is as impracticable as 
that of equalising property by agrarian laws. Both are 
extremities of political fancy. But the opposite extremities 
are unfortunately practicable. Knowledge, and property 
or wealth, may be rendered extremely unequal by fraudu- 
lent laws. And it often happens, that the destroyers of 
primogeniture, for the sake of dividing lands, are so incon- 
sistent, as to accumulate wealth by laws founded in the 
contrary principle. A power to distribute knowledge or 
wealth, is a power to distribute both. One is annexed to 
the other. A free government cannot subsist with either 
power, because selfishness invariably patronises itself and 
its adherents, and nilots ignorance and poverty to the mass 



620 THE LEGAL POLICY OF THE U. STATES. 

of people, always necessary to be sacrificed to the legal 
opulence of a few. If knowledge and wealth are left to be 
distributed by industry, a beneficial excitement of effort, 
and a division sufficient to preserve a free government, are 
produced. By dividing lands, and creating stock of various 
kinds, drawing twenty millions a year from labour, a double 
operation to great extent is produced, of enriching and en- 
lightening factitious interests, and of impoverishing the 
landed and working interests of the United States, both as 
to their minds and estates. This impoverishment of mind 
will endow the legal interests with the offices of government, 
convert representation into a mantle for fraud, and our go- 
vernment into an elective aristocracy. Had these twenty 
millions remained in the hands of agriculture and labour, 
they could have annually purchased knowledge to that 
amount ; and the difference between this annual supply, and 
its transference by law from them to factitious interests, 
constitutes the pure principle of aristocracy. Common 
good, is the best principle for industry and majority ; partial, 
for fraud and minority. If the first associates assign their 
wealth and knowledge to their natural enemies, as they 
have generally done, the war will terminate in the old way. 
By cutting up the landed interest into little farms, the inte- 
rest of industry and majority will gradually lose that dissem- 
ination of moral talents, necessary to restrain the frauds of 
the whole family of legal, exclusive or aristocratical interests. 
The interest of the majority must perish, unless a sound mind 
is lodged somewhere within it. To cheat it of the share of 
knowledge by which it may maintain its rights, under pre- 
tence of making it all mind, would be like persuading the 
other members to cut off the head, and to depend for their 
future safety on a new contrivance for making all of them 
heads. Such is the reimbursement promised by a'sytem of 
general education, for the removal of wealth and knowledge 
from agriculture and industry to legal interests. It resem- 
bles the device of sumptuary laws to hide the cause of lux- 
ury. Remove the cause, and the luxury ceases. Remove 



THE LEGAL POLICY OF THE U. STATES. 621 

the frauds which make a majority poor and ignorant, by 
making a minority rich and wise, and t])ese evils also cease. 
Sumptuary laws cannot prevent luxury, if its cause re- 
mains ; nor can the poverty and ignorance of the mass of a 
nation be removed by any system of education, if laws exist 
for enriching a minority. The laws enabling individuals to 
amass great wealth by means of the spoils of conquest, en- 
slaved Rome. Laws for enriching parties of interest, by 
tythes, offices, sinecures and stock, enslave Europe. A di- 
vision of wealth, by industry and talents, never enslaved any 
nation. Some idea of this intelligence from experience, 
seems by their constant hatred of heavy taxation, to have 
been planted in the minds of the people, of which ignorance 
is often cheated by the arts of fraud. Sometimes by char- 
ges of sordid parsimony, advanced by avaricious parties of 
interest ; sometimes by means too indirect and intricate to 
be unravelled by instinct ; and at last by pretences of asso- 
ciating it in a plot for plundering and enslaving posterity. 
Inferior agents in all wicked plots suffer punishment in 
this world, whilst their leaders often avoid it, until the next. 
It seems as if these leaders hoped to expiate their own 
crimes by chastising their instruments, without suspecting 
that they may be reserved for severer justice. Thus par 
ties of interest universally treat the mass of nations, for 
assisting them in their conspiracy against posterity. They 
reap the whole benefit of the fraud, and use it to corrupt 
and change the existing government. If, however, the 
fraud of transmitting debt, taxes and tyranny, to posterity, 
was assented to by every individual of an existing age, to 
gratify its follies or enrich its parties of interest, the assent- 
ing age itself would still be a party of interest or an aris- 
tocracy, in relation to its successors. It endeavours to en 
rich itself or pay its debts at the expense of a vast majority? 
for which it legislates without any authority. It violates 
its own principles of representation and taxation far more 
tyrannically, than was attempted by England against these 
states. The taxes imposed are infinitely heavier. Not a 



&%% THE LEGAL FOLIC Y OF THE U. STATED 

single cord of sympathy draws commiseration towards the 
unborn. Their money is spent without a possibility of the 
reimbursement, whatever it amounts to, drawn by cunning 
from the vi^es created by fraud and oppression. The par- 
ties of interest who receive the tax by anticipation, avoid 
the small cheek of contributing towards it. And the oppres- 
sor having enjoyed his spoil, has gotten out of reach, be- 
fore the oppressed acquires a power of resistance* 

The celebrated idea, " that the people are their own 
worst enemies," expressed by Ovid in his assumption of 
Ilomulus, and alluded to by Garth in his preface to a trans- 
lation of the author, in the observation, " that after a people 
are preserved from the enemy, the next care should be to 
preserve them from themselves," is adverse to the argument 
against a system of legislation in favour of pasties of inte- 
rest or aristocracy. Ilomulus himself was the author of 
the patrician party of interest at Rome, which murdered 
him, appropriated to themselves the pubiick wealth, oppress- 
ed the people, and drove them finally under the dominion of 
one tyrant, as a refuge from many. The Spartans never 
thought of these saviours against themselves* They were 
a democracy of masters over a democracy of slaves. These 
masters remained long free, because they trusted to them- 
selves for safety. Nations who receive safety, receive at 
the same time a master, whether that safety is bestowed by 
law or by force. If by law, it must be the donation of some 
party of interest, and as it is of the essence of all such, to 
elevate without merit, and to enrich without industry, the 
genuine cements of honest society, and the motives inciting 
men to good and useful actions, must all be destroyed. By 
seeking for honour and wealth in title and law, men scatter 
curses. Left to feed their passions by the help of merit and 
industry, they scatter blessings. 

Mercier, a French political writer, ascribes our consti- 
tutions to the wisdom of European philosophers, and fore- 
sees our ruin from mercantile guile. If the assertion is 
true, our gratitude for a policy, which that quarter of the 



THE XEGAL POLICY OF THE U. STATES. (525 

earth has been unable to equal, ought to be measured by 
their envy ; and when this envy shall cease, no reason foi* 
our gratitude will exist. His apprehension glances at its 
termination, but he has contracted a great idea, after he 
had almost compassed it, down to nothing, by the epithet 
« mercantile." Knowing that guile and venality led the 
way to despotism, but seeing none established by our politi- 
cal laws, he turned his eye towards the mercantile, and 
overlooked the capacity of civil law to issue it in copious 
streams. The mercantile, concealed like guilt in the breast 
of an individual, bears no resemblance to the political, pub- 
lished like justice in the face of the statute book; One 
never destroyed a free government $ the other never failed 
to do it, unless the nation destroyed that. When the English 
clergy owned 28,115 knights' fees out of 60,215 into which 
the whole kingdom was divided, the guile and venality of 
this party of interest, made it the pest and the tyrant of the 
country for five centuries. If our exports amount to 
$40,000,000, twenty of which are expended in taxes and 
the sustenance of labour, and the banks have already gotten 
a moiety of the remaining twenty, they have outstript the 
monks in availing themselves of the civil law mode of 
growing rich. The clerical party of interest contended 
successfully for a long time, that to tax it was wicked ; the 
banking has successfully advanced the same doctrine. The 
clerical intrigued with kings and beneficed the sons of no- 
bles, to obtain the support of the government $ the banking 
bribes governments, and infuses stock into agriculture. 
The clerical pretended to bestow heaven on the laity ; and 
the banking pretends to bestow wealth on labour. 

The republican principle of general or publiek interest,, 
cannot be successfully assailed by the mercantile guile and 
venality of individuals. But the guile and venality emitted 
by civil law in the shape of a party of interest, endeavours* 
by every expedient, to cut up the general interest, for the 
sake of its own safety or aggrandizement ; and soars above 
little individual frauds in the sunshine of legislative favour, 

80 



62i THE LEGAL POLICY OF THE U. STATED 

To these parties of interest nations owe the exclamations 
against a militia, and the commendations of standing 
armies. The conquest of the Roman empire ; the emanci- 
pations of Holland and the United States ; the resistance of 
France against a combination of nearly all Europe, aided 
by her deserted standing army ; the resistance of Spain, 
defrauded of her standing army, against France ; and the 
consequences of a single defeat to countries confiding in 
standing armies, can never plead successfully for a militia, 
where the system of rearing separate interests prevails ; 
because a militia cannot exist where its natural ally (the 
general interest) has been massacred up by civil law, into a 
herd of parties of interest, actuated hy that species of guile 
and venality by which free governments are destroyed. If 
men could be made wise as well as knavish, by self interest, 
the majority would see the same principle in the doctrines 
of saving nations against themselves, of defending them by 
standing armies, and of governing them by a knot of parties 
of interest, intertwined like a knot of serpents for self gra- 
tification. A standing army being itself a legislative party 
of interest, becomes naturally the associate and ally of a 
policy compounded of such parties. If a militia cannot de- 
fend a country, the inhabitants cannot long exercise the 
right of self government. If it cannot repel invasion, it 
cannot prevent the usurpation of an army which can. A 
government at the head of an army able to control the peo- 
ple, will never regard election but as another instrument to 
rivet oppression. 

The events of the revolutionary war are misrepresented 
by the combination of parties of interest (at the head 
of which, it is to be remembered, that the existing govern- 
ment by which they are created or sustained, is always sta- 
tioned) as sufficient to explode a reliance upon a militia. 
During that war they performed many gallant actions, often 
gained victories unconnected with regulars, and submitted 
at least to equal hardships, without bounties, without 
clothing, without half pay, without donations of land, and 



THE LEGAL POLICY OF THE U. STATES. 625 

without mutiny. A' theory of what might have heen achie- 
ved by a great regular army, is arrayed against a mass of 
actual services rendered by the militia. But it ought never 
to be forgotten, that the maladies which swept away the 
iirst small army, would have reached a great one ; that (he 
inability to arm, clothe, feed and physick it, would not have 
been removed by its increase ; that the small army hardly 
suffered those unavoidable privations, which a large one 
would have redressed in its own way ; and that this experi- 
ment of a militia, was made by a government without re- 
sources, without military knowledge, unestablished, and 
divided into thirteen independent sections. 

No department of the legislative policy of the states, sep- 
arately or united, seems to me to be more defective, than the 
management of the militia ; which, like a government, is ca- 
pable of being corrupted or destroyed by bad principles. The 
militia of Virginia, for instance, is commanded by officers 
holding commissions by a more independent tenure than the 
judges; namely, during good behaviour, of which they are 
themselves to decide ; and these officers are almost entirely 
promoted by rank. Responsibility is lost or enfeebled. 
.Successional power, as poisonous to our policy as heredita- 
ry, supersedes the qualities fit for office ; and patrician no- 
tions are infused into those who ought to be the vindicators 
of equal rights. If civil offices were made successional, if 
they were held for life, and if the incumbents were only re- 
sponsible to their own corps, it would beget a political exhi- 
bition resembling a militia, moulded by the same principles. 

The commendations bestowed by foreigners upon our 
form of government, are suggested by an inspection of our 
political laws, and the principles they inculcate upon civil 
legislation. It is probable that a discouragement and ne- 
glect of agriculture and the militia, was never suggested 
by this inspection to the most capricious imagination ; and 
yet it is equally probable, that our legislatures have devoted 
a thousand fold more time to the single subject of banking, 
than to both. The maxim, " that nations cannot be frer 



626 THE iEGAL POLICY OF THE V. STATES. 

without a sound militia," is reiterated by our constitutions $ 
and our legislatures bestow penalties and contempt on this 
mode of defence associated with the general interest ; and 
pay, clothes, rations, bounties and honour, on a mode of de- 
fence associated by its moral nature with legal beings of the 
same moral nature. Fraud and folly then express astonish- 
ment at beholding a good thing uncultivated, less thrifty 
than a bad one carefully nurtured. Suppose the comparison 
had been, between a regular army nursed by privations, and 
a militia fed by money. Let an honest inquirer after truth, 
ascertain the amount spent on the perishing modes of de- 
fence by parties of exclusive interest, military and naval,- 
since the revolution, and estimate the impetus which the 
same sum judiciously applied, would have communicated to 
the general and immortal mode of defence. 

Perhaps the principles and doctrines of England, for 
many centuries, in favour of liberty, so incomprehensible to 
the rest of Europe, and so useful to these U. States, arose 
from her long disuse of standing armies, and her moderate 
recourse to them, after the rest of Europe had been made 
subservient to the chiefs of these parties of interest. Pro- 
vidence seems to have raised up another nation in the United 
States, better isolated against the pretexts under which the 
military separate interest poison is administered. Oceans 
in front and rear, on one flank a barren, and on the other an 
enervating climate, with a vast expanse of territory within 
these natural circumvallations, ought to enable them forever 
to reject the bitter potion, so long resisted by their ancestors 
within the shadow of powerful rivals. The legislative ne- 
glect of agriculture and the militia, and cultivation of par- 
ties of interest to enrich and for defence, have been selected 
to shew the necessity of distinguishing between good and 
bad principles, for the purpose of preserving the loyalty of 
legislation to the political laws, enunciated by the sovereign 
national authority. 

Rely not upon oaths for this loyalty. They were for- 
merly used to hide treachery by kings themselves, who 



THE LEGAL POLICY OF THE IT* STATES. 621 

swore to defend liberty, fulfil treaties, and observe charters, 
Oaths never stop the current of consequences flowing from 
laws inconsistent with the principles of constitutions. Pros- 
pective oaths may possibly be presumptuous and impious, in 
promising mental stability, when the Deity has not implant- 
ed that quality in man. Being taken according to law, and 
broken according to nature, the reverence which would 
have sanctified the obligation, had it been limited to past 
occurrences, is weakened. As a security for the observance 
of political law, the sovereign power of construction to heal 
the most tender consciences, renders them quite insignifi- 
cant. A thousand instances of this species of party medical 
skill have occurred. " The constitution, the laws of the 
f* United States, and treaties, shall be the supreme law of 
*' the land." Construction can condemn the second member 
of this sentence into an allegiance to the third, and open the 
way for a subserviency of the first to the two last. It can 
substitute for the responsibility of the house of representa- 
tives to the people, a submission to the President and Senate. 
It can require law unsuggested by discretion, and unexam- 
ined by the understanding. And it can invest the President 
and Senate, having the concurrence of the judges, with a 
power to impose taxes, incur debts, dismember the territory, 
and legislate almost without limitation. Let us rather then 
establish principles, than trust to oaths, for the mainten- 
ance of our policy. 

Patronage must be recorded among the modes of de- 
stroying forms of government ; or political, by civil law. 
It can seduce the servants of God to advocate fraud and 
superstition. It excites talents against truth. It corrupts 
by hope, by fruition, and by disappointment. It teases and 
deceives the people by its contentions for office, into a fatal 
indifference towards the measures of a government. And 
its poisonous influence reaches electors, as well as represen- 
tatives, by a thousand imperceptible channels. A balance 
of good and evil ought to be struck between patronage, ex- 
ercised by one man or divided among a multitude. In the 



628 THE LEGAL POLICY OE THE IT. STATES. 

first shape, it is able to produce a monarchy in disguise \ ict 
the second, its factions are perishing. Exercised by various 
transitory bodies of men, it produces no fraudulent party 
combinations, because such bodies escape both from vice 
and rancour, as a cloud escapes from view ; and the happy 
divisions of our government, bestow an opportunity to dis- 
perse a tumour, constituting a species of accumulation of 
power, of the most acrid nature, in relation to our princi- 
ple of division, in all its applications. Accumulated, patro- 
nage becomes the real legislator of a nation, under what- 
ever forms laws are constructed ; and secrecy, both legisla- 
tive and executive, draws ever its operations a dark cloud, 
through which a combination of intellect and opportunity 
only can penetrate. Pretexts for this secrecy can never be 
wanting, when philosophers have represented the principle 
as a valuable attribute of monarchy, by inventing a theory 
of its usefulness, without contemplating the real objects 
exposed to view, whenever time has torn off the veil, under 
which kings, priests and statesmen, modestly pretend to 
conceal their virtues. Are these gentlemen less inclined to 
boast without merit, or to disclose their virtues, than others, 
because they can pay flatterers without disgrace, and repel 
contempt by power ? If so, there is some reason for bestow- 
ing upon their humility that confidence, which consigns the 
fate of nations to the exclusive custody of governments, and 
subverts the entire political structure erected upon the prin- 
ciple of self government, and the sovereignty of the people. 
Secrecy is good for conquest, say its advocates. Let nations 
who wish to be free, remember that freedom cannot exist, 
except hy controlling the conquests of their own governments 
at home. Patronage and secrecy united, are daily carrying 
some of their defences. Conquest abroad is rare, and no 
compensation for conquest at home. Algernon Sydney (an 
author, who stands as a witness, that talents and truth may 
be outfaced by ignorance and errour) has proved that the 
ardour of conviction, is preferable even in war, to the apa- 
thy of secrecy. If this ardour is too strong for discipline? 



THE LEGAL POLICY OT THE l". STATES. 629 

where discipline is strongest, what will be the success of a 
free form of government, capable of being sustained only 
by the convictions of reason, if it is confided to the same 
species of apathy ? Conviction built upon secrecy, is reli- 
gion built upon mystery. Is religion improved or injured, 
by being purged of this feculency ? Will that which purifies 
religion, corrupt a government ? A system of legislation in 
favour of parties of exclusive interest, influenced by patro- 
nage and shrouded in secrecy, constitutes a body politick of 
thorough putrefaction in the eyes even of an ordinary re- 
publican anatomist. He will easily discern, that though a 
government founded upon a publick opinion, which opinion 
was to be founded upon secrecy, might rival the Indian cos- 
mography, it could never know the principles on which it 
stood. 

Governments, like persons or poems, ought to sustai» a 
consistent character. Had Homer made his heroes whine 
in elegy, or chat in pastoral, he never would have been called 
the prince of poets. If antiquity had transmitted to us two 
fabulous poems ; one, of a king, nobility and house of com- 
mons, contending for mastery during several centuries ; the 
other, of a nation which had sustained the calamities of a 
long war to establish a republican government ; both con- 
cluding in the catastrophe of swallowing up the long ad- 
justing balances, and the late established republicanism, 
with the greedy throats of paper stock and parties of inte- 
rest ; would they not have been considered as monstrous 
violations of probability, well depicted in the first five lines 
of Horace's art of poetry 1 Still, either monster, like the 
God Fo, would be celebrated by its priesthood. A know- 
ledge of principles is as indispensable to a nation, to enable 
it to sustain a free government, as of plants to a horticultu- 
rist. It is as absurd to ingraft aristocratical or monarchi- 
cal buds upon a republican root, as a brier upon an oak. 
Those who pretend to this art, design gradually to eradi- 
cate the oak, and to plant the brier where it stood. By 
being able to class principles, we shall easily class Iaw« 



ubO 1ME LEGAL POLICY OF THE V. STATES, 

Aristocracy, by playing the Harlequin, bj Protean trans- 
formations, and by its painted draperies, will no longer be 
able to perplex and deceive mankind. Through the robes 
of superstition, noble orders, paper stock, and of all the 
various parties of interest, the same principle will be seen, 
and whenever it changes its dress, every body will know it 
to be a new attempt to conceal its deformity. 

But our efforts to understand principles, are obstructed 
by that toad acoucheur, construction, Avhich pretends to 
draw out of the womb of the term " republick," every con- 
ceivable form of government, except the solitary despotism 
of one man ; and to require her maternal tenderness and 
blind affection for the whole monstrous progeny. This skil- 
ful operator boasts of the still rarer art of making two be- 
ings out of one foetus, in the case of the English govern- 
ment ; and of proving that though this republick and mon- 
archy, this piece of hermaphrodite political mechanism, has 
been born again and again, according to the motley humours 
of barons, priests, kings, conquerors, mobs and stockjob- 
bers, it has yet the wonderful property of being always the 
same, or at least, whatever our operator pleases to make of 
it. By travelling over history, and collecting the fraudu- 
lent or erroneous applications of the word republican to re- 
duce it to an equivalency with the word " government," it 
is made like the term " man," to embrace all moral quali- 
ties, good and evil ; and liberty is deprived even of her name. 
This device can only be eluded by a moral analysis. It will 
enable us to know good or bad governments, or good or bad 
laws, in the mode by which we distinguish between good or 
bad men. Its basis, is a specification of qualities, illustrated 
by those of our policy ; as for instance, « the sovereignty of 
" the people, an equality of rights, an abhorrence of privi- 
«• leges and sinecures, free discussion, a preference of a 
<• militia to mercenary armies, a protection and not a distri- 
« bution of property by law, an enmity to all parties of 
«f interest, and many others f and not political names, al- 
ways expounded by interest and party, to mean any thing or 



THE XEGAt POLICY OF THE tl. STATES. 631 

nothing. Guelph and Gibeline, Whig and Tory, Federal 
and Republican, have all been equally capable of no mean- 
ing or any meaning ; nor was the name Praise God Barbone, 
any proof of the piety of its owner. But though the names 
of men or of parties, are a frivolous definition of such human 
qualities as are liable to fluctuation, yet it is easy to invent 
or agree upon some epithet, denoting a definite collection 
of moral principles, applicable to the formation of a govern- 
ment, having previously arranged such as are contrary to 
each other in distinct divisions. Freedom of speech or its 
suppression, responsibility or exemption from control, divi- 
sion of power or its accumulation, defence by a militia or 
by a standing army, division of property by individual ex- 
ertions or by fraudulent laws, are instances of the facility 
with which an arrangement might be made, exhibiting dis- 
tinct classes of moral principles, capable of receiving a 
name, or of being used to chasten governments or legisla- 
tion, without being comprised by any epithetical definition* 
Either the word « republican," may be used to convey an 
idea of the class of good political principles, or if it be true 
as is often contended, that like the names Peter and Judas? 
applied to men, and whig, lory, republican and federal, ap- 
plied to parties, it can convey no idea of principles, then 
the class of good principles may be constituted into a band 
of sentinels, each ready to alarm nations whenever an in- 
road is made by fraud, avarice, or ambition, upon the quar- 
ter where he is stationed. It is true that the names of go- 
vernments are as unable to convey an idea of the qualities of 
governours, as are the names of men or of parties of theirs, 
because men are still the subject named, and therefore, un- 
less we abstract the name of our form of government, 
from those who may administer it, and consider it as imply- 
ing a fixed class of principles, for the express purpose of 
controlling the fluctuating and selfish nature of these ad- 
ministrators, its freedom cannot continue. By relying upon 
the undulating temper of undisciplined man for the admin- 
istration of a government, we are brought back to the most 



652 THE I.EGAL POLICY OF THE U. STATES, 

artless and savage state of society which can be conceived 
and lose all those principles for regulating human nature^ 
to which the world is indebted for its whole progress from 
a |tate of barbarity. Government, freed from moral re- 
straints, is the result of the passions of the men who govern* 
Men, combined in self constituted parties, such as whig and 
tory, republican and federal, not being exposed to any moral 
restraints! similar to the political laws of constitutions for 
disciplining governours, act as governours would do, unre- 
strained by political law. If governours thus unrestrained, 
would be guided by selfishness, avarice and ambition, all 
such political parties must by the laws of nature follow the 
same guides. If governours, at liberty to follow their own 
passions, would not be constituted into a genuine republick 
by assuming that name, neither can a name infuse republi- 
can principles into unrestrained parties of interest, of ins 
and outs, struggling for wealth and power. The world has 
never seen such parties guided by the principles which se- 
cure a free government, because they are not tied to loyalty 
by the ligament of political law in their party proceedings, 
nor would it have ever seen a republican government, if ail 
governours had been equally at liberty to pursue the dictates 
of self interest or passion. Nominal republicanism, being 
spurious and fraudulent, takes every thing it gains from 
that which is real and true. The penalties paid by nations 
for an opinion, that good names implied good principles, 
caused tlie United States to resort to the expedient of con- 
trolling men by political law 7 , to which they have already 
been indebted for a wonderful number of good governours, 
whilst few or none have ever been made, even by the good 
names judge, bishop or nobleman. Whenever they are de- 
luded of this expedient by the artifice of adapting names to 
a temporary prejudice, they will pay the same penalties 
paid by other nations for the same absurd idolatry. Govern- 
ment has been called a necessary evil, on account of the pro- 
pensity of governours to sacrifice the publick good to their 
*iwa selfishness. Why should nations invent a whole tribe- 



THE LEGAL POLICY OF THE IT. STATES. 633 

•f parties of interest, which are not necessary evils, when 
it is so difficult to manage one ? Their unrestrained vices 
replenish governours with the bad qualities designed to he 
effaced by political law ; and the loyalty of folly to party 
names, occasionally releases a government from the whole- 
some restraints of political law and good moral principles,* 
so as to place arbitrary power within the reach of the huv 
man deities of the day. 

Let us draw a short comparison between the true legal 
policy of the United States, according to their constitutions* 
and that of England. The first is guiltless of making legal 
yirtue and vice, knowledge and ignorance, wealth and po- 
verty; of preventing industry from counteracting pernicious 
extremes,* and of rooting out social order by levelling, or 
social liberty, by monopolizing laws, to exhilirate tran- 
siently mad zealots, or to enrich permanently knavish par- 
ties of interest. The disposition of wealth to individuals 
and parties of interest, is the essential employment of the 
English legal policy. In such a legal policy is lodged the 
kernel of every civilized tyranny, however the shells may 
be diversified. If a nation is wise enough to chace this 
single political demon out of its statute book, it can hardly 
lose its liberty ; if it is so weak, as to surrender that book 
to the fiend, it cannot keep it. By leaving property to be 
divided by industry, the avarice of the majority is engaged 
on the side of a free government ; by legal divisions of it, 
the avarice of a minority is bribed to destroy one. Nature, 
cries one philosopher, produces equality ; it produces aris- 
tocracy or the well born, says another ; our policy draws 
on itself the hatred of both, by refusing to both, laws for 
effecting that which they assert is produced by nature ; and 
the English obtains the admiration of one, for effecting by 
law, that which is said to have been effected by nature; 

Laws to make men rich, are like those to make them 
wise. Both cause innumerable evils to mankind. The 
wise men made by nature, are eternally overturning those 
made by law ; and industry, like wisdom, being unequally 



6S& THE LEGAL POLICY OF THE XT. STATES, 

distributed, is for ever resisting similar tegal frauds against 
its rights- Nature, by refusing to transmit talents or in- 
dustry from father to son, frowns both upon hereditary 
forms of government, an i equalising and accumulating 
laws. The first are the least adverse to her decrees. In* 
dividuals of fine qualities may be selected with whom to 
commence monarchies or aristocracies, and accident or edu* 
cation may possibly cause some succession of these quali- 
ties, however certainly fools or tyrants will turn up at last, 
But laws for enriching, in their commencement and through- 
out their operation, are regardless of merit ; and the equa- 
lizing theory pretends both to keep properly equal among 
evanescent beings, and to supersede mental inequalities. 
The ability of industry to divide property sufficiently to 
destroy political combinations, was demonstrated in England 
by the contrivance of the king and the judges, for letting 
her loose upon entails ; and the ability of accumulating 
laws to destroy this wholesome operation, was subsequently 
demonstrated, by letting loose funding and banking laws 
upon industry. The idle, who seek for wealth by charter- 
ing laws, are wiser than their equalising brethren. Law 
has never been able to produce an equality of property, 
where industry exists ; but it can produce its monopoly. 
Our policy rejects its application to both objects, and our 
constitutions unequivocally disclose an opinion, that civil 
liberty depends upon leaving the distribution of property to 
industry ; hence laws for this end, are as unconstitutional, as 
those for re-establishing king, lords and commons. Legal 
wealth and hereditary power, are twin principles. These 
frauds beget all the parties or factions of civil society, such 
as patrician and plebeian, military and civil, stock and 
landed. The enmity and contrast in all these cases, arise 
from a legal difference of interest, and the active and pas- 
sive members in this fraudulent system, are distinctly de- 
signated by the wealth and poverty it diffuses. In England, 
where it prevails, « every seventh person draws support 
i( from the parish at some period of his life, exclusive of 



THE XEGAX POLICY OF THE U. STATES. 635 

' u those who submit to misery, in preference to the humilia* 
46 tion of asking charity." 

It is an unalterable law, that man shall be guided by 
self interest. Governments, therefore, administered by 
man, though made by constitutions, are maintained, corrup* 
ted or destroyed by laws. Legislation in favour of parties 
of interest, shews that they govern legislation ; and in that 
case they always cut a new government out of any consti- 
tution, by a succession of laws, as a statuary cuts a statue of 
any form out of a rock. The party of interest created in 
England by paper stock, moulded the government in a cen- 
tury, into the form most suitable to itself; and fche neierity 
observable in the motions of a similar party here, is an evi- 
dence of the advantage it derives from the precedent. 

Self interest is so ingenious as to deceive both itself and 
others, by verbal patriotism and false comparisons. The 
order produced by hereditary magistrates, is compared with 
the confusion produced by fraudulent laws ; superstition is 
compared with atheism ; a well armed and appointed mer- 
cenary army, with an unarmed and unorganized militia; and 
the freedom with the licentiousness of the press. By such 
arts and arguments, parties of interest effect their selfish 
purposes. The two artifices of comparing loans with taxes, 
and war with a dishonorable peace, are most unhappily adap- 
ted for consigning nations to those who deal in credit. 

The ancient aristocracy perished with idolatry ; the 
modern, rejecting divine descent as no longer tenable, relies 
for defence on human laws. It is remarkable that Mr. 
Godwin, discerning no match for aristocracy but aristo- 
cracy, (as if the devil could only be controlled by the devil) 
should propose a theory bottomed upon its essential princi- 
ple, for the purpose of destroying it. Can a more wicked 
association of aristocrats be conceived, than the idle, assem- 
bled to enact Mr. Godwin's law, for dividing among them 
selves the property of the industrious. Proteus, in his ug- 
liest form, does not cease to be Proteus. Considering pri- 
vate property as a natural or social right, the observation 



636 THE LEGAL POLICY OF THE ¥. STATES, 

Is equally just. As nature compelled man to acquire in or- 
der to exist, his acquisitions from his own labour are his 
property, according to the law of his maker ; since man 
must have existed before society. Man's unequal moral 
and physical powers and wants, further disclose nature's 
enmity to the equality of his acquisitions, And the plea- 
sures and pains annexed to industry and idleness, strongly 
prove that they are bestowed by nature, as just rewards or 
punishments for a virtue or a vice. But both the levellers 
and monopolists are for destroying nature's or the creator's 
law, built upon these physical and moral grounds ; the first 
faction, because property is thereby made too unequal, the 
second, because the same law distributes it too equally : and 
though inveterate enemies, they agree that this divine 
errour should be corrected by human laws ; only that each 
contends for an opposite excess, and brands the extremity of 
its adversary with all the epithets used to define tyranny. 
But either would be a legal metempsychosis of our policy. 
The levellers, indeed, by attempting that which is unattain- 
able, betray the principle of leaving property to be divided 
by industry, and destroy the interest by which they are di- 
rected. If the accumulators succeed, the two most remark- 
able revolutions recorded in history, will terminate at the 
points they started from ; the equality of France, in a des- 
potick hereditary dynasty ; and the republicanism of the 
United States, in the English aristocracy, compounded of a 
variety of parties of interest. 

This species of confederation, so different from that by 
which these states are united, has invented a species of law 
neither constitutional nor legislative : and sought for a new 
term to gain for it an independency of the nation, who can 
alter the one species of law ; and of legislatures, which can 
annul the other. Law-charter claims an inviolability be- 
yond all civil and political laws whatsoever. The origin 
and use of instruments assuming the privilege of violating 
whatever principles they please, without being subject to 
any, is worthy of some attention. 



THE IrEGAL POLICY OE THE U. STATE 5. 637 

Charter was originally a monarchical mode of conveying 
to town or mercantile associations, certain portions of civil 
libe? -i y, considered as valid, upon the ground that the liberties 
of the grantees belonged to the grantor, and were, therefore, 
subjects of sale, gift o«- barter. Upon this stock has been en- 
grafted the idea, that law-charters were irrevocable, without 
considering that liberty, according to our policy, is not a sub- 
ject of sale, gift or barter; or the property of the government. 
Though kings, according to the first opinion, might by char- 
ters, sell or give more liberty to some of their subjects than 
to others ; and though such deeds ought to be considered as 
not within Ahe power of one contracting par^y to vacate; 
yet it does not follow, according to the second, that our go- 
vernments can do the same thing, or that charters made by 
them for privileges or monopolies, ought to be equally sa- 
cred. Liberty, by means of royal charters, crept into 
cities, and from these diffused many benefits over nations* 
That aristocracy should make this fact a precedent upon 
which to creep into our policy,is a striking illustration, either 
of its own ingenuity, or of its rival's ignorance. To draw 
a precedent in favorem mortis, out of one in favorem vitse, 
and to pass off the deduction, as genuine, upon those to be 
killed by it, shews that logick itself deserves the character 
we have heard given to republican forms of government ; 
and that Mr. Locke might have saved himself all the trou- 
ble he has taken about the human understanding, by sub- 
jecting it to the same definition. The fetters of bondage 
were gradually broken by the irrepealable charters of kings? 
and ought, therefore, to be gradually welded by the irre- 
pealable laws of republicks ; and frequent elections being 
necessary to enable nations to preserve liberty, the design 
ought to be defeated by the irrevocable laws of a single 
legislature, which may choose to destroy it. What but the 
corruption of hope, from Ihe dreams of wealth poured by 
aristoeratical artifice into the imagination of ignorance, 
can make such reasoning current ? Thus alchymy is made 
1.0 appear practicable, and soldiers are persuaded (o make 



658 ME XEGAl POLICY GP THE IT. STATES-. 

conquests. The conquest is made, their leaders are enrich^ 
ed, and the soldiers live in poverty and die in hospitals, 
And so the people of England have been led to make laws 
in favour of parties of interest, and to experience the fate of 
3oldiers. 

Mr. Adams considers the existing English government, 
not as a confederation of parties of interest, but as a kind 
of national confederation, inclosing every individual within 
its pale, marshalled into three orders. But having exhibit- 
ed it in a theory to which he allows perfection, he goes over 
the world in search of its practical existence, exclaiming, 
* lo it is not here, lo it is not there, but it would have ap- 
« peared both here and there, had the balances been pro- 
« perly adjusted.*' To me this government seems to consist 
of a confederation of parties of interest, excluding the ma- 
jority of the nation. Such as the church of England, the 
paper stock party, the East India company, the military 
party, the pensioned and sinecure party, and the ins and 
outs, once called whigs and tories ; each struggling for self 
interest and self government, but all, creeping forth like 
caterpillars from the legal nests in which they have been 
hatched, to feed upon the. fruits of the nation. Most of 
these combinations are republieks, convinced that they are 
their own best friends, whilst they prescribe monarchy to 
nations, pretending that national association is its own ene- 
my. The last doctrine is preached to transfer to them- 
selves the property of others. But they prefer republican 
principles to secure it. 

The form of the English parliament was originally 
fashioned by feudal principles : to give money to the king 
was its chief duty ; and he could garble election to effect his 
ends. The modes by which its pristine end was effected. 
are changed, but the end is the same. The king has found 
rotten borough and septennial representation, with a close 
union between the crown and the herd of parties of inte- 
rest, a better system for raising money upon the nation, 
than even his feudal privilege or power of bestowing or 



THE LEGAL POLICY 0¥ THE t\ STATES. 659 

Revoking the right of representation ; because these parties 
freely give him the money of the nation for a good share of 
it. The poverty of the English nobility, compared with its 
wealth before the abolition of perpetuities, has exposed the 
house of Lords to the full effect of the modern modes for 
guiding the house of Commons. Can we more clearly dis- 
cern Mr. Adams's idea of a beautiful balance of orders in 
England, either in the original feudal parliamentary con- 
stitution, or in its existing modification, than we can Dr* 
Henry's, of a beautiful English constitution somewhere hid- 
den, in a short, frivolous and dead code of civil laws, called 
magna charta ? If this is a just picture of the English go- 
vernment, with what reason has Mr. Adams eulogized it ? 
"With what reason has Publius or the Federalist, assigned 
to it the rank among governments, which Homer bears 
among poets ? And with what reason are politicians intro- 
ducing parties of interest, the present poison of that* into 
our form of government ? 

Let us eount the cost of the modem English system to 
that nation, to place before our eyes what the same system 
will cost here. It draws from the nation into its unappeas- 
able avarice, not less than one hundred millions of pounds 
sterling annually. If the English king was to ask the na- 
tion for one third of its lands only, the dullest man would 
see that despotick power must grow out of such excessive 
wealth | but an annual receipt by himself and the parties of 
interest leagued to the crown, of more than t}*e rent-roll of 
the whole, has hidden the despotism in an aggravated de- 
gree, under the various covers these parties of interest are 
bribed to throw over it. England and Scotland contain 
about fifty millions of acres of land. It is probable that an 
average rent of twenty shillings an acre would exceed its 
value, and certain, that double this rent would do so. Le- 
gislation, exercising a power of distributing wealth, has 
then in England already disposed of all the land of the 
kingdom, or its income. In the United States, the same 
system ha? not yet ripened into equal maturity. But such 

$2 



54h0 THE LEGAL POLICY OF THE U. STATE3. 

political arithmetick would probably in a state of peace* 
exhibit an expenditure of about twenty millions annually, 
by all our governments, state and continental, partly for 
necessary purposes, and partly to feed parties of interest $ 
and a gross income to banks of about five millions annually. 
This total exceeds a moiety of our exports, and yet the sys- 
tem, discontented with this proportion of them, may possibly 
propose to be let loose upon exports more directly. Twenty 
five millions of income at six per centum, require a princi- 
pal of four hundred and fifty millions. Supposing the lands 
of the United States to be of the average value of four dol- 
lars an acre, this income covers above one hundred and 
twelve millions of acres. If a moiety of it is received by 
funding and banking, then these two parties of interest, 
have already attached upon more acres of land here, than 
the whole family hare been able to lay hold of in England, 
The question to be determined is, which is best for man- 
kind ; a government for advancing the prosperity of an en- 
tire nation, or one for selecting, by law, sundry minor na- 
tions out of the great one, and extracting as much money 
as possible, in straight and crooked ways, under honest and 
fraudulent pretexts, from the entire nation, to enrich these 
legal selections. If the united interest of the king, nobility, 
priesthood, stockjobbers, placemen, chartered companies, 
army and navy, with their associates, governs the British 
government, then the national association (if there is or ever 
was one) has no government. There is no British nation, 
except a combined minority of interests, distinct from the 
general interest. It might with equal propriety be assert- 
ed, that the servants and drudges who enrich the East India 
company, were members of that company, as that British 
people, not belonging to the association of exclusive inte- 
rests, but serving and enriching it, were members of the 
British nation. The first species of government does good 
to a multitude of people, without injuring one ; the second, 
does good to a few people, by injuring a multitude. The 
latter is the principle of every species of political oppres- 



TUB LEGAL POLICY OF THE IT. STATES. 641 

sion. Can a preference be given to a principle in any form, 
comprising the essence of political tyranny in every form ? 

The malignity of monarchy, aristocracy and Urarehy, 
rests in their disposition to bestow by law, benefits "p^n 
some, at the expense of others. It will he curious if the 
human intellect should be able to see this evil, however dis- 
guised by governments thus denominated, and also be blind 
to it undisguised, when practised by a republican govern- 
ment. When posterity shall compare Europe, plundered 
by the tricks of popery, with nations plundered without a 
juggle, its verdict as to the relative state of knowledge be- 
tween the tenth and nineteenth centuries, may be ant cipa- 
ted. The more pilgrims, the more wealth for the priests of 
Loretto, and the less for the laity. The more paper stock, 
the more wealth for stockjobbers, and the less for those 
from whom it is drawn. Such will be the evidence upon 
which it must decide. 

Doctor Samuel Johnson, who was probably the best in- 
formed tory (if despotick principles are meant by that name) 
who ever lived, has been able to find but one argument in 
defence of converting civil government into a pecuniary ma- 
chine ; and those who mistake names for principles, or sacri- 
fice principles to self interest, have availed themselves of it 
in a multitude of modes. Pecuniary extravagance is in his 
opinion no evil, but a good, as it produces a brisk circula- 
tion of money. A sophism which can only acquire credit 
by proving, that the situations of debtor and creditor, payer 
and receiver, and rich and poor, are equally desirable. Can 
the opinions of all mankind upon these contrasts be chan- 
ged by an author, however famous, who has in a thousand 
other parts of his writings, discovered, that he himself con- 
curred, unequivocally, with the universe. Nations deluded 
by it, when reduced to the state of the prodigal son. find 
prisons and poor houses, in lieu of a father's roof and a fat- 
ted kid. If the argument is false in respect te the pariy 
of interest exercising a government, it must be equally so, 
respecting every other party of interest. Kings, hierar"- 



642 THE LEGAL POLICY OF THE XJ. STATES. 

chies, noble orders, stockjobbers and chartered companies 
enriched by law, must either be all blessings or all curses, 
as the circulation of money is increased in all these cases, 
first by taking it from the multitude, secondly by giving it 
to the few, and thirdly by its employment in the purchase 
of property and the enjoyments of luxury. 

In the same ingenious mode a brisk circulation of power 
is also produced. Accumulated in a few hands, like money, 
it breaks down confinement, spreads itself far and wide, and 
compensates majorities as they are compensated for legal 
accumulations of money. Doctor Johnson has neglected to 
tell us, that mankind cannot have one of these blessings 
without the other ; that money attracts power, and power, 
money ; and that by accumulating either for the sake of a 
brisk circulation, you accumulate and circulate both. The 
accumulation of power has used two arguments in its de- 
fence, infinitely more plausible than any urged by legal 
projects for accumulating money ; namely, the supposed 
benefits of a uniformity of religion, and the difficulty of 
governing an extensive territory. Europe, however, re- 
nounced a religious monarch, and the United States a civil 
one ; the latter upon principles incapable of being disse- 
vered from those which forbid legal accumulations of 
wealth, Knowledge and will being considered as the go 
verning agents, it seemed unnatural to contract the agency, 
as the territory to be governed became more extensive. 
The splvere of one man's knowledge and will, is infinitely 
less than that of several millions of men. Each planet, 
however brilliant, is unable to exceed its limited orbit ia the 
firmament, The knowledge and will of a monarch is limi- 
ted by this moral geometry, like those of other men. AVhen 
the territory bursts beyond his orbit, monarchy ceases, and 
some anomalous government ensues ; oligarchical, military, 
deputy-royal, tumultuous, or infinitely variegated by cir- 
cumstances. Hence neither the virtues nor vices of a 
monarch are felt at a distance from his person. Miserable 
provinces under a g«od, and flourishing under a bad mo- 



'THE LEGAL POLICY OF THE IT. STATES. 645 

narch, are common spectacles ; because monarchy ends at 
the end of the monarch's sphere, and some political anom- 
aly commences. Instead of monarchical or aristocratical 
accumulations of power, to give it a brisker circulation* 
the United Slates have rested their policy upon the two go- 
verning agents, knowledge and will, of a capacity or moral 
sphere commensurate to their territory, and naturally expan- 
ding with it. The capacity of this policy beyond monarchy, 
for the government of an extensive territory, is proved by 
tlie equality of liberty or of government, between those who 
reside near to the capital, and those far from it ; an effect 
of infinite value, which monarchy cannot produce. Near the 
monarch and at a distance from him, different governments 
are always found. Monarchy only succeeds in cases where 
it is not unnaturally loaded ; as those of armies, garrisons, 
savage tribes and private families;* and the same cases are 
found to be below the genius of a policy calculated for a 
wider sphere. "With such experience, and without consi- 
dering that the mind of a nation is spacious, and that of a 
monarch narrow, the maxim, " ne sutor ultra erepidam," 
is wonderfully violated by the dislocated notions, that mon- 
archy is fitted for spacious, and republican forms of govern- 1 
ment, for narrow spheres. 

A power of changing oligarchs, is the most perfect 
capable of being exercised by the monarch of an extensive 
territory; but this change of oligarchs is far from proving 
that no oligarchy exists, and therefore unless oligarchy is 
monarchy, the latter cannot cover a large territory. 

As election cannot extend the knowledge and will of one 
man contrary to the laws of moral geometry, the execution 
of the boundless power of appointment bestowed upon the 
president, must depend upon the knowledge and will of the 
very worst kind of oligarchs ; such as are irresponsible and 
unknown. The moral incapacity of one man to legislate, 
knowingly, for a great nation, is the same in respect to offi- 
cial appointments. Accumulated power to be circulated by 
one man, bears a close resemblance to accumulated wealth 



6i* THE LEGAL POLICY OF THE U. STATES. 

to be circulated by a few men. If merit could arrange its 
own claims to office, with a degree of jus-dee infinitely ex- 
ceeding the power of one man, that imperfect mode of ap- 
pointment would never have been admitted. Industry, 
talents and labour can arrange their rights to property, with 
iniinitely more justice, than any species of legislative dis- 
tribution can effect. Election infuses into the legislature a 
quantity of publick spirit, beyond what it infuses into a pre- 
sident, of numerical proportion ; but this spirit commensu- 
rate to our territory, is itself altered and narrowed by re- 
placing it with the avariee and ambition of individuals, 
infused by a power of distributing wealth by law. By su- 
peradding this power to tbe injurious influence of executive 
patronage, self interest is awakened as far as it can be 
awakened by any political means, and totally expels from 
legislatures the publick spirit infused by election, because 
representatives able to distribute wealth, never forget them- 
selves. Oligarchy and aristocracy are the natural fruits of 
this legislative patronage, far richer than the president's, 
and corrupting whole corporations and all legislative per- 
sonages. And if our policy meditated an elective aristocracy 
still less than an elective monarchy, any mode of introdu- 
cing one, must be a usurpation. As money and power accu- 
mulate together, laws for introducing one will produce both. 
In empowering governments to control the passions 
which stimulate individuals to injure each other, nations 
have unwarily by unnecessary powers, stimulated gover- 
nours to become themselves the wrong doers. The whole 
preference of the policy of the United States, consists in an 
avoidance of this errour ; by adopting the errour, this pre- 
ference will be lost ; the old system of distributing property 
by law, is exactly that unnecessary power, by which most 
or all the governments tried by men, have been stimulated to 
oppress the people, upon the merit of preventing the peo- 
ple from oppressing each other. Hence has arisen the 
difficulty of deciding between republican and monarchical 
forms of government. When both exercise the tyrannicai 



THE LEGAL POLICY OF THE U. STATES. 645 

power of distributing wealth, the latter must be least op- 
pressive, because it is less expensive to gratify the rapa- 
eiousness of one than of many. Accordingly, spurious re- 
publieks, or those exercising this power, universally afflict 
the people with the heaviest taxes. Life is not without its 
evils, though spent in the lap of a genuine republican go- 
vernment ; but morbid ideas of imaginary perfection, or 
the disposition of ignorance to encounter unknown evils to 
escape from present inconveniences, too often draw us out 
of limited happiness into unlimited tyranny. If we should 
exchange a bed of down for a bed of thorns, because we 
sometimes rested badly, we should resemble the nations 
who have preferred a distribution of property by the will 
of a government, to its genuine republican distribution by 
industry, talents and labour. 

It was an early discovery, that conscience was an insuf- 
ficient security for justice between man and man ; but the 
insufficiency of the same security for justice on the part of 
governments to nations, was never distinctly perceived be- 
fore the American revolution. Out of the complete disco- 
very then made, arose our political laws for assisting the 
consciences of governoiirs ; and if they can emaneipate 
themselves from restraint hy civil laws, sowing cancerous 
seeds in the body politick, the discovery will probably be 
lost forever. 

If separate legal orders or interests are the causes of 
social oppression, free government ensues of course, by 
avoiding them. If a combination among the legal distribu- 
tees of wealth, generates the kind of government existing 
in England, then the same kind of government naturally 
ensues here from the system of distributing wealth by law. 
Mr. Adams's book contains an extensive collection of the 
causes which have produced tyranny. These are unexcep- 
tionable, the separate interests of legal privileges or emolu- 
ments. As to the evil we agree ; in the remedy we differ. 
Introduce, says he, the cause, to prevent the effect ; expel 
it, say I, for the same end. 



646* THE LEGAL POLICY OF THE V. STATED* 

There is no difficulty in deciding upon the proper objects 
of this expulsion. The polarity of the moral is as distinct 
as that, of the material world. A politician as certainly 
knows the point of the moral compass to which the system 
of distributing wealth by law, inclines, as the mariner, 
whether his needle points toward the north or the south. 
The polarity of the re-eligibility of the president has been 
seen in the re-eligibility of consuls Augustus and Bonaparte ; 
and that of individual patronage and legal parties of inte- 
rest, is before our eyes in the present state of Europe. 
The extent and situation of the territory of the United 
States, enable theni to resist this system more successtuily 
than any other nation. Extent keeps at a distance from 
the bulk of tlie nation the calamities of war, and enables it 
to reliect. Cut up into sections, not a single individual might 
escape them. Small nations are continually exposed to the 
artifice of legal wars, from the facilities for them furnished 
by impinging territories ; and are debarred from the use of 
reason to detect the fraud, by the universality of the dis- 
traction they produce. But a nation possessed of extensive 
territory, happily removed from real causes of collision 
with other nations, like the United States, is peculiarly fa- 
voured by providence for the detection of this artifice (so 
generally practised by ins and outs, and other parties of 
interest) both as the pretext for it must be shallower, and the 
national capacity for its detection by reflection and reason, 
greater. The pledge for a free government arising from 
the extent and situation of our territory is so transcendant, 
that the enemies of a republican form of government craf- 
tily inculcate an opinion, that this form is not adapted for 
an extensive territory ; for the purpose of producing terri- 
torial divisions to discredit republican systems, by the 
calamities to which impinging states are exposed from the 
artifices of parties of interest ; or with a design of trans- 
ferring to their rival, monarchy, the advantage of extensive 
territory, so important that it is at least doubtful whether a 
greater portion of human happiness w ould not result from 



THE LESAi FOLIC* OF THE U. STATES. 6£7 

it, though united to a had form of government, than from 
the same region cut up into narrow territories, governed by 
the hest forms. 

The United States, under a monarchy, can only retain 
the advantage of extensive territory, by an oligarchy conr- 
posed of deputy-kings, bashaws, satraps or mandarins. As 
a republick, the advantage can only be retained, by rejec- 
ting the aristocratical system of feeding avarice by law 5 
because this system, being more oppressive than monarchy* 
would be exchanged for it. If this errour is rejected, in- 
stead of paying the old price for extensive territory, no 
inequalities of .liberty or of government can exist, and the 
territorial capacity of our policy, will be adequate to the 
liberty and happiness of the whole, instead of being devoted 
to the avarice and ambition of parties of interest. Monar- 
chy ties extensive territories together by deputy-kings* 
fortresses and armies. A numerical but spurious republick, 
uses for this purpose both armies and laws for distributing 
property, but soon becomes the victim of the first, because 
the hatred purchased by the second deprives it of national 
assistance. But a genuine republick, unites the most ex- 
tensive territories by justice, and is defended by the national 
affection. It travels over space without bloodshed, advan- 
ces without conquest, and is only arrested by the ocean. 
How much more sublime is the idea of forming a great na- 
tion, by a chain of republicks, subordinate to publiek good, 
than by a chain of satraps subordinate to imperial will, or 
of chartered companies subordinate to selfish avarice ? 
Such a system stands upon national interest. No people, 
except ourselves, have seriously attempted to make this in- 
terest the basis of civil government. Sometimes it is lost 
in the pomp of titles, at others under the cowl of supersti- 
tion ; sometimes it is drowned in the din of arms, at others 
counterfeited in the garb of patriotism : sometimes it is 
sacrificed for the bribes of patronage, at others sfupiiicd by 
the promises of stock ; but under our policy it never 

become completely a fcio de se, except it shall submit to 
the legislative usurpation of distributing wealth and poverty. 

S3 



&*S THE £EGA£ POLICY OE THE V, STATES. 

A free government, like the trinity, consists of integral 
qualities. General legislation or legal impartiality is one* 
Legal dispensations of wealth, being a contrary quality, 
cannot he also a quality of a free government. On the 
contrary they enable governours to create factions, feed 
avarice, and usurp arbitrary power. Perhaps the final suc- 
cess of the revolutionary war, was produced by the depre- 
ciation of the paper money, and the other causes, by which 
government was prevented from creating parties of interest 
by pecuniary laws ; an impotence which guaranteed the 
patriotism even of both ins and outs. Election, though ano- 
ther integer of a free government, is so far from being a 
compensation for the errour of distributing property by 
law, that it is itself corrupted by it. In England it is made 
the instrument of the will, the advocate of the follies, and 
the shelter for the crimes of an offieer, who is thus consti- 
tuted a despot, capable only of being displaced by another 
despot. An allianee between election and a legislative pow- 
er to divide property, constitutes the elysium of statesmen 
and the purgatory of labour and industry. There is no 
other mode by which one party can be induced to pay, and 
the other can acquire as much money* Hence statesmen 
will for ever admire and recommend the English form of 
government. But what answer could they give to the fol- 
lowing simple address : " You tell us that we shall be won- 
" derfully benefitted by legal transfers of our income to the 
" creatures of law, in a multitude of modes. As your ar- 
" guments perplex us, be pleased for one year to transfer 
" the income of these creatures of law to the children of 
6i industry, that we may feel the truth/' 

The question, « whether a legal power can be constitu- 
" tienally used to impair or destroy the principles of our 
i( policy," has been already brought before the publick, in 
tha efforts of the general government to distribute gain or 
loss between the states by protecting duties, banking char- 
ters, making canals and roads, and other legal benefactions. 
The children of a father who lives for ever, but annually 



T»E iEGAl JPOLICY OF THE U. STATES, 649 

Biakes a division of their property according to his own 
pleasure, are his slaves. If the general government gains a 
similar position in relation to the people and to the states, 
the principles of a division of power, of its responsibility, 
of protecting property, of its division by industry, of state 
confederation, and indeed all other principles eonstituting a 
.genuine republick, are abolished. 

The best restraint upon legislative acts tending to the 
destruction of a true republican government, consists of the 
mutual right of the general and state governments to ex- 
amine and controvert before the publiek each others, pro- 
ceedings. This right is stated in certain resolutions which 
passed the legislature of Kentucky on the 8th of November, 
1798, in the following words, " Resolved, that the several 
f* States comprising the United States of America, are not 
« united on the principle of unlimited submission to their 
<s geueral government : but that by compact under the style 
** and title of a constitution for the United States and of 
•* amendments thereto, they constituted a general govern- 
« ment for special purposes, delegated to that government 
« certain definite powers, reserving each State to itself, the 
« residuary mass of right to their own self government ; 
« and that whensoever the general government assumes un- 
« delegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and 
" of no force. That to this compact each state acceded as 
" a State, and is an integral party, its co-states forming as 
<* to itself, the other party. That the government created 
66 by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge 
" of the extent of the powers delegated to itself, since that; 
« would have made its discretion, and not the constitution, 
" the measure of its powers ; but that, as in all other cases 
" of compact among parties having no common judge, each 
« party has an equal right to judge for itself as well of 
w infractions, as of the mode and measure of redress. 

The style of these resolutions throughout ascertains 
the author*. Both the parties of the United States have 

* Mr. Jefferson: 



650 THE LEGAL POLICY OF THE V. STATES. 

asserted and denied this doctrine, as they happened to be in 
or out of power ; for or against the existing administration. 
But I am unahle to discern any better resource for the pre- 
servation of civil liberty, than it affords. The state go- 
vernments are wise, watchful and temperate sentinel s» 
checks upon each other as well as upon the general govern- 
ment, not dictators armed with force, but advocates armed 
'with reason. Vindications of this salutary doctrine are 
necessary to save it from the usurpations of precedents, of 
which parties will even avail themselves in power, although 
that power was obtained by opposing them. But this mode 
of extending the powers of the general government, is in- 
consistent ^ith the principles of our policy. It is restricted 
by limitations imposed by a superior authority, which it 
can neither diminish nor destroy by its own acts. It is not 
a complete government, but associated with the state go- 
vernments by the same superior authority, which has allot- 
ted specified powers to each party, and neither can increase 
these powers by its own precedents, nor even by its positive 
laws, without rebellion against this authority. If both 
should concur in extending or diminishing the powers of 
one or either, by the plainest precedents or laws, it would 
still be the same species of rebellion, and unconstitutional. 
Prescription and precedent, founded upon the acts of an 
entire government, are extremely different from those foun- 
ded upon the acts of a section of a government, because 
the first is a complete political representative of the nation 
and the second not so. Their authority is also widely dif- 
ferent in limited and unlimited governments ; if the former 
could extend their powers by such agents, they could make 
themselves unlimited. The legislation of congress, con- 
trary to the principles of the general constitution, is in 
every view similar to the legislation of the senate without 
the concurrence of the house of representatives, and equally 
entitled to the authority claimed by precedents under abso- 
lute governments ; an authority founded only in unlimited 
power. 



*THE XEGAI POLICY ©E THE IT. STATES. 651 

The danger of extending by legislation powers given to 
powers not given or prohibited, is also exposed to tbe pub- 
lick view by the same resolutions, as follows : " That the 

* construction applied by the general government (as is 
" evident by sundry of their proceedings) to those parts of 
*i the constitution of the United States, which delegate to 

* congress a power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, 
" and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common 
« defence and general welfare of the United States, and to 
« make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for 
« carrying into execution the powers vested by the eonsti- 
** tution in the government of the United States, or any 
« department thereof, goes to the destruction of all limits' 
« prescribed to their power bij the constitution. That words 
*« meant hj that instrument to be subsidiary only to the ex- 
*. ecution of the limited powers, ought not to be so construed 
« as themselves to give unlimited powers, nor a part to be 
*< taken so as to destroy the whole residue of the instrument. 
" That the proceedings of the general government, under 
" colour of these articles, will be a fit and necessary subject 
« for revisal and correction at a time of greater tranquillity, 
(< while those specified in the preceding resolutions call for 
(i immediate redress." It is to be lamented that these pro- 
ceedings of the general government, going ♦'< to the destruc- 
tion of all limits prescribed to their power by the constitu- 
tion," had not been specified by the same able pen. That 
they could only be of a legislative nature is plain ; but whe- 
ther laws for subjecting agriculture, manufactures, talents 
and labour to legal capitalists • for rallying chartered and 
stock feudatories around the genera! government ; or for 
destroying commerce under the power of regulating it, 
were meant, is uncertain. The evil however has arisen 
from a confidence inspired by the numerical analysis. By 
deluding us to expect from men, that which principles alone 
can "yield, namely, a free government, we are induced to 
neglect the application of principles to laws. A numerical 
•lassification of men, triple, decimal, or centnriate, as 



652 THE XEGAi POLICY ©E THE ¥. STATES* 

imperfectly ascertains their moral qualities, as one drawn 
from size, meat, bone or hair. An analysis of sheep, 
founded in moral qualities, is equivalent to the numerical 
analysis of governments ; by the first, Ave can never disco- 
ver whether we have good sheep ; nor by the second, whe- 
ther we have a good government or good laws. Had each 
quarter of the globe adopted a different member of the nu- 
merical analysis, supposing it to comprise monarchy, aris- 
tocracy, democracy, and a mixture of the three, the whole 
world might still have suifered oppression. Crimes perpe- 
trated individually or collectively are still crimes ; but na- 
tions led astray by the numerical analysis, having selected 
one of its members for their form of government, conclude 
that they have attained to the utmost degree of political 
perfection, and cannot do better than to bear its crimes as 
they do a drought. Hence a disciple of the most repub- 
lican member of the numerical analysis, is induced to bear, 
defend and applaud the erimes of his selected form, an ab- 
horrence of which when committed by other forms, caused 
his preference ; and hence political parties are equally 
strenuous for the justification or correction of the same 
jabuses, as they happen to preceed from their own or the, 
leaders of their adversary. Both evils arise from the want 
of a worthy object on which to bestow our zeal. Having 
been taught to believe, that the numerical analysis presents 
us with a complete political pantheon, we are compelled to 
pay our adoration to some of its deities. Yet we never ex- 
tend the blindness we attach to the object of our own wor- 
ship, to the objects selected by others to receive a similar 
offering. A republick sees very plainly oppressions com- 
mitted by monarchy and aristocracy, and these two, those 
committed by republicks ; but whilst each sees the vices of 
the other members of the numerical analysis, the blindness 
occasioned by the want of a moral analysis, tolerates the 
same vices in itself. If we would consider, that we discover 
the vices of the rejected forms of government, by bringing 
theju to trial* without favour or affection, before a jury of 



THE iEGAL PGLICT 6* ME F. SfTATESV 653 

good moral principles, we should instantly discern that the 
same tribunal would detect the vices of the government we 
have selected ; and that an analysis, similar to that formed 
in our own minds to try supposed culprits, might be per- 
fected into a complete capacity for rooting up as they are 
planted, those legal scions, which otherwise never fail to 
grow, until they draw to themselves all the nourishment of 
a free government. 

It is necessary to illustrate these observations by the aid 
of a familiar fact. The two parties, called republican and 
federal, have hitherto undergone but one revolution. Yet 
each when in power, preached Filmer's old doctrine of pas- 
sive obedience in a new form, with considerable success ; and 
each out of power strenuously controverted it. The party 
in power asserted, that however absurd or slavish this doc- 
trine was under other forms of the numerical analysis, the 
people under ours were identified (the new term to cog this 
old doctrine upon the United States) with the government ; 
and that therefore an opposition to the government, was an 
opposition to the nation itself. The extraction of passive 
obedience, of all political principles the most slavish, out 
of the best member of the numerical analysis, as the ex- 
tractors themselves confess, furnishes a conclusive proof of 
its insufficiency for teaching us how to preserve a free form 
of government. This identifying doctrine is exactly analo- 
gous to Agrippa's fraudulent apologue, for constituting a 
government the intellectual dictating head of the whole 
body politick, and subjecting the members to a passive obe- 
dience. It puts an end to the idea of a responsibility of the 
government to the nation ; sameness cannot be responsible 
to sameness. It renders useless or impracticable the free- 
dom of speech and of the press. It converts the represen- 
tative into the principal. It destroys the division of power 
between the people and the government, as being themselves 
indivisible. And in short it is inconsistent with every prin- 
ciple by which politicians and philosophers have hitherto 
defined a^ frce^ government. This ingenious doctrine of 



65* THE LEGAL POLICY 6F THE tf* STATES. 

identity for justifying tyranny in fact, because a government 
is free in form ; and for defeating the responsibility of the 
government to the people, because the constitution was cal- 
culated to produce it 5 asserted and denied by both our 
parties, demonstrates that opinions fluctuate with power. 
From this undeniable fact it follows, that a nation and its 
governours can never entertain the same opinions. Nations 
will for ever wish to be free, and governours to be despotick* 
Future parties will not be less infected by power than for- 
mer, and former have successively advanced the doctrine 
refuted by Sidney. 

The parties called whig and tory in England, the first 
the disciple of Filmer and the other of Sidney, have con- 
clusively settled the fact; and out of the demonstration 
have arisen the efforts of the United States for securing the 
general interest of the nation, gainst the ambition and 
avarice of the party of interest administering the govern- 
ment, by a string of moral precautions, endeavoured to be 
explained in this essay ; such as responsibility, division of 
power, a sound militia, and a distribution of property by 
industry and talents and not by law. And if a nation 
should sacrifice to any governours whatsoever, these moral 
precautions for the preservation of its liberty, it is as cer- 
tainly lost, as are the previous principles of every party by 
the acquisition of power 

The danger of parties to free governments, arises from 
the impossibility of controlling them by the restraints of 
political law ; because being constituted upon selfish views, 
like a set of mountabanks combined to administer drugs for 
the sake of getting fees, the nature of the poison cannot be 
foreseen, nor an effectual antidote anticipated. No division 
of power, no responsibility, no periodical change of leaders, 
no limitation of " thus far you may go and no farther,'* 
stops their career. In every form, therefore, they consti- 
tute the saiut; avaricious or furious species of aristocracy, 
which would b^ produced by a form of government in the 
hands of a self constituted aad uncontrolled body of men. 



THE XEGAI, POLICY OF THE IT. STATES. 653 

They are universally disposed to persecute, plunder, op- 
press and kill, like all governments unsubjected to political 
law; and under the title of patriots, are, like fanaticks under 
the title of saints, ready to perpetrate any crimes to gratify 
their interest or prejudices. By melting down the fetters 
of moral and republican principles in party confidence, we 
abolish the only known remedy against the evil qualities of 
human nature, abandon our experiment of political law 
founded in these principles, and rest for security on igno- 
rant mobs, guided by a few designing leaders, or on cunning 
combinations, guided by avarice and ambition. The Inde- 
pendents of England and the Jacobins of France, even 
abhorred the despotisms they introduced, but the results 
were unavoidable, as the natural effect of the unlimited 
confidence these parties acquired. This confidence produ- 
ces an unlimited government, or one unrestricted by the 
ligatures of a moral analysis ; and such a government is 
despotick. Under a despotism of any form, and in the form 
of a party of interest more than in any other, bodily safety, 
the safety of property, and the freedom of the mind, cease. 
Malice, envy and calumny instantly become the prime mini- 
sters of the furious and tottering tyrant. Knowing his 
doom from the fate, of his predecessors, he hastens to glut 
his appetite for mischief before he dies. No numerical 
checks or balances can reach this dreadful party tyranny, 
It is even able to suspend or destroy those solemnly establish- 
ed by nations, arid to make the people themselves the authors 
of their own ruin. A political analysis alone, composed of 
moral principles, can reach and tame a beast, from which 
men flee to monarchy, because it lays waste and devours 
their rights with a thousand hands and a thousand mouths. 
This can test party legislation and actions. But freed 
from the rigid control of good moral principles, the profes- 
sions of parties are like the flattering sunshine of the morn- 
ing, and their acts like an evening deluge. In legislation 
contrary to genuine republican principles, sustained by a 
dominant party zeal, Hcs, in my view, the greatest danger 



656 THE jLEGAE POLICY 0¥ THE U. STATES. 

to the free form of government of the United States ; nor 
can I conceive any augmentation of the danger, equivalent 
to an exercise of the power of distributing wealth by law* 
If, therefore, these essays should only prove, that it is the 
office of a republican government to protect, but not to be- 
stow property, they may protract the period during which 
our government may remain the servant of the nation. 
For as worldly omnipotence is annexed to a power of 
dealing out wealth and poverty, nations are universally 
retributed for the folly and impiety of submitting to this 
species of human providence, by a divine decree, that it 
shall unexceptionably convert these servants into masters 
and tvrants. 



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